Here's a Hypothetical
by Mel like Mellow
Summary: Jim/Pam, circa Season 3. "If I thought that Pam was interested--" What would happen if Pam's courage from Beach Day sprouted a little bit earlier? Say... at Phyllis' wedding?
1. Chapter 1

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 1_

It's somewhere between _Fields of Gold_ and a strangely out-of-place _You Were Meant For Me_ (**Jewel**? How did that slip into Scrantonicity's repertoire_?)_ when Jim spots Pam weaving her way out of the reception hall, jacket under her arm, head bowed, and a downcast look shadowing much of her earlier glow. Truthfully, he had seen evidence of her gradual deflation throughout the evening, if not most assuredly just moments prior. They did that eye-locking thing they sometimes do that, even now, after months (let's be serious: years) of inescapable grief and heartache and whole (half) hearted attempts to try "moving on", still makes his stomach flip-flop like he just went down a steep hill he didn't know was coming.

And he knew that hurt there in her face, that hurt hidden in hues of olive and hazel, as she saw him watching her while he danced with this other woman. But after years of convincing himself of the infinite positive, possible silent meanings found in any other variety of little looks and smiles, only to be told he'd simply "misinterpreted" …

Well, he'd long since given up on any "interpreting" endeavors.

Which totally explains why he's tracking her out to the terrace, as the entirely coincidental _Every Breath You Take_ begins to accompany his careful footsteps. Of course.

But really, what was he supposed to do about it now, anyway, you know? Yeah, sure, there was that tug from his throat to his belly that pulled painfully any time Pam looked even the least bit defeated – old habits die hard, they say. And yeah, there was some guilt somewhere mixed in there. For her. For him. For Karen, as he slow danced her and tried not to let her catch his eyes darting up and back toward Pam as she made her exit.

He watches Pam tuck her hair behind her ear fitfully as her silhouette sways to the music inside. He knows that, up close, he could probably see her fingers shaking. He tries not to let the goosebumps start so early, but his body never listens.

It's all a ruse in his brain, he thinks. A cleverly constructed prank on himself that's been years in the making. He's so used to making things up for himself, anyway, to placate … whatever. Playing pretend to make himself feel better, when all it's doing now (and ever has done) is making him feel worse. But, y'know, if he really thought that Pam felt _that way_ – if he really thought she might be interested—

Even thinking it, his mouth starts to stretch like a fish out of water. He simply can't breathe around the thought.

She doesn't seem to acknowledge him at first; maybe she doesn't know he's there. Pam's leant up against the railing now, bulky with her jacket on over a dress he knows fits her so much better, with her hair so pretty and smooth under nightfall. He's been dying to touch just this one curl all night when she gets close or if he thinks about it for too long. It's like that every time she barrel-curls her hair, it's so compelling because there's this daring little part of his mind that tip-toes along his memories of that horrible night with that dress, and her hair, when he touched it—

He swallows loudly enough and purposely scuffs his foot as he starts forward. Pam goes rigid and barely turns her head – Jim's sure she can see him in her peripheral.

"Hey," he offers, really disliking the roughness in his voice.

"Hey," she replies with a sobering softness.

God, he wishes he didn't know her. If he didn't, he wouldn't be able to categorize that as her '_Roy and I just…_' voice. 'Cause that's what it is. He didn't even see them together, doesn't even know where Roy's at right now, but he just knows that's what that tone is. And now he's going to wonder about it and it's going to drive him crazy if he doesn't figure it out.

_Fucking great_, he thinks as he leans up beside her and ducks his head to survey the garden. He sees Michael jumping up to peek in the windows and it lifts his heart a little bit, just enough to crack a joke around the air.

"Scrantonicity rocking a little too hardcore for you in there?" Jim teases. He's rewarded by her appeasing half-smile, because Pam appreciates his indirectness. She always has.

"Uh, yeah," she rolls her eyes and presses her lips together. "I think I'm reaching my quota for badly covered Sting and the Police songs for the year, now. And, really, if I have to hear them play '_Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic_', I just may blow my brains out."

_Déjà vu_. He grits his teeth under his forced grin. "Not a fan favorite?" She shakes her head and he shrugs a shoulder, folding himself closer to the railing, trying not to think about the sleeve of her coat near his arm. "Eh, well. If I'm not mistaken, they did mix it up a little with some Jewel, right? Maybe we can make requests, like—"

"Roy did that," Pam mumbles and clicks her nails together absently. His eyes fall to her fidgeting hands. "That was, like … 'our song' or whatever—I mean, he was trying to…" She trails off and he wonders where in the distance she is gazing now.

"Oh.." Jim feels at a loss, because he's not wholly sure how to interpret (there's that word again) just what she means. "Well, points for effort to him?" He suggests, trying to sound mock-helpful. Really, he hopes not. He shouldn't hope (what has hope ever done?) but he does anyway.

He's not sure if it's relief or something else that floods his system as she shakes her head and heaves her Roy Sigh. "No." She sounds firm and certain, but he sees her slump a little. "I mean, I don't know. I just wish he wouldn't, though."

Her thumb rubs absentmindedly under the knuckle of her ring finger on her left hand. He watches the anxious movement, recognizing that if there had been a ring there anymore, she'd be working it fiercely off her finger. His heart doubles up in his chest for just a moment.

Jim clears his throat again and tilts his head one way to study her under the strand of lights hanging above them. She glances back, expression mute, before she tips a smile up at him. He returns it just as his heart cinches for her. "He says he's trying," she begins again, her head just barely shaking. "But… he just shouldn't. That's not—" Another low breath, as Pam's fingers clench and unclench around the railing and her eyes fervently seek something out on the lawn across from them. "It's just not what I want."

"What **do** you want?"

He hates himself and all his daring. The question is out of his mouth before he's got time to think about it properly and remind himself that that's not an appropriate thing to inquire to the girl who broke your heart. Especially not when she's got her doe-eyes fastened on you and there's this imperceptible glaze slipping over her vision.

Pam must see him startle, because she glances away and simultaneously he feels the loss and the liberation from her hold. He's played this same scene a hundred and one times before, and he's not sure he's gonna hold out for much longer.

Jim lets his hand fall from the railing as he steps away, and she moves again to face him – quicker this time, with a tiny furrow of her brow. He's not sure what he expected, but when she inhales and holds it, Jim can only be perplexed.

Then he hears the first round of the chorus from inside and, slowly, he smirks.

"I … hate this song," she puffs out the breath, a laugh on her words, and Jim follows suit, his middle already aching from the quake of it – and something more. With a determined bow of her head, Pam requests of him gravely, "Alright, you know what to do. Just make it quick."

Without missing a beat, he directs his middle and index fingers toward her in the reference of a gun, his thumb drawn back. "Any last words, Beesly?"

Her eyes open after a pause, and he's shocked by the green of them. His hand-gun falters in the air, and he drops it abruptly as the weight of this sudden tension begins to crescendo overhead.

_Fuck me._

He remembers this moment. His ribs crack underneath him and all he can make out in this tunnel vision is her glassy eyes reflecting dull orange-yellow dangling above them and his half-horrified face. It's like a wave before it breaks, the way she sharply inhales a breath and curves a lopsided, dewy smile at him. Her lashes flutter prettily in an effort to ward off tiny droplets.

"A few, actually," Pam quiets – but it's not really quiet at all, to him, it feels like his eardrums are gonna burst. Her eyes fall somewhere at his collar. He swallows thickly, he watches her watch his throat bob with the effort. When her gaze travels back up and meets his again, Jim thinks of his first speech class in college, and of that night he tries to never, ever consider … but always happens to anyway. He notices, just before she speaks, that she isn't all that nervous, and for the life of him, he can't imagine why not.

She sucks up all the air outside and around them, he sees her chest heave. "Mostly that I'm …I'm sorry." The apology trembles a little in the middle, but her gaze is unwavering. "I just wanted—"

"God, don't," he interrupts, pleading on an exhale, his head turning briefly away from her. He can sense her dismay at his reaction, feels her curling back from him. "It's not—you really don't have to, Pam--"

"I do," she tells him with a firmness he's not sure he recognizes. Jim looks back up and sees her resolute frown, the wetness weighing at the bottom of her eyes. "I mean, I don't expect—" She stops, looks away, starts again. "I just … I want things between us to be okay again," Pam continues and raises her eyes once more. It hits him like a roundhouse, how open she looks. "And it sucks so much not being able to talk to you, or have fun with you, like we used to, y'know?"

He folds his lips and just watches her unfold; he's disbelieving, guarded, unsure, and-

"It's awful, the way it is now," she goes on with a sharp jerk of her head in his direction, her arms coming around to cross against her chest. "I was so excited when I heard you were coming back from Stamford. You really couldn't know, but I was." He doesn't know if he nods, but she continues nevertheless, and he thinks himself stranded on an island somewhere in the Pacific as she blusters on around him, about him.

"But then you—it was different. And, like, I get it. I do. People … people change, and they meet … other people," he sees her gaze flicker in the direction of the doors they're just outside of, and his heart hammers a little harder. "And that's fine, it's fine, but I at least thought we'd be able to fit right back together somehow, y'know? And you weren't gone that long and, yeah, I know what I did to you was just … terrible," her voice begins to wobble, and Jim's got two notions: to comfort her and to draw away with fury at her ridiculous understatement. "I mean, I'd hate me, too. I do. And I hate what happened between us."

"But the truth is, Jim," the way she says his name has every hair on his arms and the back of his neck standing on end. His body is at total attention to her proximity and of her ebb and flow. As her mind begins to slow down, he keenly watches her falter, but the moment she looks back up at him, he is suddenly struck by how intently and completely he feels her and knows her – of that, there is no misinterpretation. "I really miss you. And I'm just sorry for everything that I did, and said, or … whatever. I just," she bites the corner of her lip so hard, he sees it redden under the pressure, finds in his peripheral that her hands are beginning to wring together at her hip. "…I just needed to say that to you."

She releases and seems to settle, her lip let go and a pent up breath expelled with the finality of her words. The quiet is deafening in his ears, left with just a ringing and the echo of her bluntness, of her honesty, and of a million different thoughts that whirl up at once in his brain. He studies her, looking so small under the dim lighting and in front of him, and he can't remember anything seeming so fragile like this moment.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thought I'd try my luck at some Season 3 angsty Jim/Pam. The scene in _Phyllis' Wedding _when Jim THs about "if he thought Pam was interested..." got me thinking: what if Pam did the _Beach Games _speech (or a variant thereof) a little bit sooner? What if things in Season 3 worked out a little differently?

Possible future chapters pending. Tell me what you think! I'm still new to writing Office fic, so constructive criticism is appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 2_

She clears her throat to break the silence that looms around them. Her throat feels raw; she almost thinks she's said too much, but the weight that's drifted off of her aching bones is too great and precious for her to worry about it now. So Pam smiles halfway and darts her eyes toward her shoes, the door, and then to his face – it hasn't changed in those few seconds. He still looks struck.

"Anyway," Pam wishes she could laugh it off, and she threads her fingers anxiously through her curls at the back of her head. "I just … that's all I wanted to say. So, I just—I'm just gonna—" Her mouth moves in ways to apologize again, but all she winds up doing is biting her teeth together behind a tiny, thin-lipped excuse for a smile as she tries to edge around him.

"Wait, Pam," his voice comes urgently behind her and she whirls on her heel, heart jamming up inside her. Jim's looking a little more 'together' now, a little less deer-in-the-headlights. His brows knit inward as he observes her, and she feels suddenly like she's under a spotlight, her face flushing red and hot as her words begin to catch up to her brain.

She waits for him to say something – anything would do. Another joke to roll it all away, a confrontation, another admission. The silence is dragging that weight back down to her collar again. But finally he looks back up toward her, his eyes so terribly full of that honesty and she hates him a just a bit for wearing his heart on his sleeve so unabashedly.

"You're right," Jim finally nods after a beat, his eyes shifting about her features. He ducks his head, exhales long and slow. "You're right."

_About any particular part?_ Pam wants to query, but she knows, can feel, that she just needs to let him take his time. Of course, as Scrantonicity floats out the window again, she remembers painfully that time is not on her side at this juncture.

But he continues as his hands slip around into his pockets, and he keeps his gaze leveled somewhere at her shoulder. "I've been trying, you know?" He half-wonders of her, looking quickly into her face for a second to spy any agreement. She nods once, and he accepts with an inclination of his head. "It's just … it's been really, really hard. You … have no idea."

"I think I might," Pam dares softly, and she's startled by his sudden glance up. There's that confusion, that scrutiny. Like he's scouring her for the definition of a word that means everything. It's almost intrusive.

"You think?" He counters then, and she sees the walls start to build back up.

She sighs, bows her head to the side as she admits cautiously, "I might have taken the long way, but I got there."

Jim chuckles stiffly, and she can notice out of the corner of his eye as his shoulders tighten. His lips press together tightly – she hates this face. "I didn't know there was a scenic route. Silly me."

"Don't be like that," Pam chastises him quietly, as her arms protectively wind about her midsection. "Just take it for what it is, okay?"

"And just what is this, Pam? Huh?" His hand gestures sharply between the two of them and she ducks her head from him and the edge of his words. "What do you want me to say? I'm telling you, I'm _trying_."

There's a desperate break in his voice and it kills her a little bit. The shaky way he runs his hand through his tousled hair, before he dips his finger in his collar and tugs at the knot in his tie, as though he's suffocating or something, has her stomach twisting in all kinds of guilty spirals. She swallows and loosens her arms, grudgingly meeting his face again.

"I know," she nods again, low tones being all she knows now.

The heavy quiet filters in again, but it's shattered as _Don't Stand So Close to Me_ and the rest of the world invades their space. Jim's eyes widen and Pam turns, finding Karen hesitating at the door with a curious tightening at her jaw. She arches an eyebrow at them both, her shoulder shrugging for show as she nods toward Jim.

"Was wondering where you were," Karen scoffs. Her expression is guarded; Pam can't make out anything except dwindling surprise as the other woman rakes a cool stare across her. "Hey, Pam. Thought you'd left already."

"Just about to," Pam pipes, a bit too brightly, and she grimaces. "I was just—"

"We were catching up—" Jim intercedes, that smile that doesn't quite meet his eyes drifting up and out of nowhere. "Remembering some good times. Right?"

She doesn't know what to make of it, so Pam just nods along and gulps down around her heart that's lodged up in her throat.

"Cool," is Karen's ultimate, detached opinion on the matter, as she lifts the hand not bracing open the door toward Jim. She's got a single-minded smile on her face, and Pam can only look away at what it likely implies. "You ready to go? I think I've had my fill of wedding cake and cheesy covers."

Jim laughs and moves forward to take her hand. How well he plays this game, Pam thinks, watching him slip an arm around her waist and say something corny like, "let's blow this popsicle stand."

Her name brings her out of her momentary reverie, as she looks up to find Jim staring at her with muted intent. "You gonna be okay?" He asks her, unaffected by Karen's attention between them.

She nods and bites her tongue, a helpless roll of her shoulders all she can really muster. "Uh, yeah. I'm probably gonna head out soon, anyway. Getting late."

"Yeah, it is," Karen agrees with a none-too-subtle tug at Jim's lapel. "C'mon, let's go. I'm getting cold out here, Halpert."

"Here," Jim pushes a set of keys into her palm and pats her back in what can only be defined as a congenial manner. "Go start it up. I'll be down in a sec."

Karen's look is clearly suspicious as she glances between the pair, her fingers folding in delicately over the keys as they jingle in her palm. "'Kay. But make it snappy, pal." With a final curt glimpse and smile toward Pam, she's out the door and back into the hall, and it's just Pam and Jim and the miles between them again.

"You should go," she offers hastily as his mouth barely begins to open. Her palm gestures toward the door. "I'll be okay. Really."

Jim is unconvinced. Probably because her voice is so high. He knows her better than anyone, she's well aware, and it's fascinating how he can seemingly dissect everything about her just by the way she talks or sighs or moves. And it's like he's known everything little like that about her for years and years. She's not sure she even has such an intense catalogue of all her conscious and unconscious physical give-aways – but Jim most certainly does.

But he doesn't seem prepared to confront her or contradict, because he's backing up a couple paces with a few slow, weary nods. There's a "goodnight, Beesly" mumbled as he turns from her, and Pam just barely begins to allow her efforts to settle over her chest before he's abruptly pivoting. It takes just three long strides for him to be up to her, and almost by instinct her arms open up. All of a sudden, she's wrapped up in him and her fists are tightening around his back as he gathers her to him in a firm embrace.

There's nothing intimidating or unsettling or even provocative about the way he holds her. She fits just right, with her chin on his shoulder and her arms stretching around his back. He squeezes her in the way a brother might, just enough to make her stomach ache with the force of it. When he draws back from her, there's a pinkness in his cheeks and a light smile grazing his lips.

"For the record," he starts and his arms slip away after lingering just a second more than necessary. "I miss it, too. And … I don't hate you, Pam."

"I know," she tilts her head away, gaze casing the street below, and she spots Karen leaning against Jim's Saab. Her chest seizes for a moment, but it subsides into nothing, as she feels him clutch her bicep tenderly.

"I mean it," Jim continues to affirm as he steps safely away now, his throat working to clear itself of anxiety. "You really do mean a lot to me. And we ought to work on this."

She hates verbalizing for the sake of it, and he must know this and know what her look means, because he simply reciprocates her appreciative smile, the slow bow of her head. "I'll see you on Monday, okay?"

"Yeah," she agrees vaguely, her eyes dancing around his retreating feet. She only hears him make his way toward the hall door again, never once glancing up. The door creaks open, accompanied by the blaring of the music and raucous chatter, before it shuts with a distinct_ click_ behind him.

Her lungs fill up to brimming as soon as he's gone, and her eyes begin burning with the sting of her insides as they swell. Pam braces a hand against the left wall as she leans over, watching as Jim's figure eventually jogs outside the church, on a direct and swift line toward his car. He bows his head toward the passenger window, says something, then rounds the car.

The engine hums to life; she can hear it all the way over here, before the car plows off down the street, red taillights glowing under the night.

Pam pats the cold brick and glances downward to find the wedding party escorting the brilliant groom and bride toward their vehicle. She hears Michael crow something happily, sees the confetti and rice sparkle under the lamplights, and a smile stretches into fruition across her face at the rising cheers and fanfare.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Decided to go ahead and whip up chapter two, since I just wanted to finish this night scene before the rest of the story begins. Next up: a day in the office, rekindling friendships, and ... other stuff!


	3. Chapter 3

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 3_

It takes her a while to get up the strength to pull out of bed. Pam lies there on her back, sighing slowly, relieving herself of morning grogginess, as her mind begins to lurch forward and roll over her life so far.

It's been two nights since Phyllis' wedding. Pam glances across her room to find her dress still hanging on the closet doorknob, looking all pretty and inconsequential. Not at all like the one has she kept tucked far, far behind everything else in her closet and out of her mind. She exhales again and lolls her head toward the window, where new light is filtering in from the outside.

Another plus of the single life? She can leave the blinds open and let the dawn wake her up on the weekends. Roy used to hate that; he'd roll over and moan, shoving her in the shoulder, reprimanding her in a slurred, sleepy voice that she'd left the curtains open again and, _"Babe, how many times…"._ And she'd climb out of bed, pad over to the window, and grudgingly she'd shut out the morning light. She doesn't have to do that now. She can wait and stare as the line of sunlight inches closer and closer toward her bedspread.

Sometimes, she thinks that Jim wouldn't mind. Sometimes, she imagines he'd smile as soon as the sunlight touched his face.

Pam's up and out of bed, showered, and at her kitchenette by the close of the ninth hour. Hair curling up in what she hopes will be smoother ringlets (_that is, if that fifteen-dollar serum does what it's supposed to!_), she's still warm and damp as she listens intently to the voice chattering from her cell.

_".... is all I'm saying, Pam,"_ Isabel sighs. _"You just don't wanna go there. You left him for a reason, right?" _

"Yeah, no, I know," she murmurs and sniffs, riveted by the milky swirl in her coffee, thinking just of those reasons and how only one of them ever meant enough. "That's what I told him, too. But you know Roy. He just kind of pouted and looked all defeated. I have to say, a part of me did feel really bad for him."

_"Points for effort, I guess,"_ her friend muses, and Pam quirks a smile, her memory tickled pleasantly.

"Hey, that's what Jim said."

_"Ohh? We're having conversations of the Jim variety?" _There's a teasing lilt to Isabel's voice, and Pam can only roll her eyes. _"Do tell."_

She laughs at the restrained urgency there, and she shifts a little as she tries to recreate an unbiased account of two evenings prior. "It's nothing, really. I just, you know … I guess he saw me start to leave, because he followed me out—"

_"Oh, so there was following involved?" _

"Knock it off," Pam blushes and laughs despite herself. "Anyway, so…" She hesitates, thinks back, and her hand comes over her reddening cheek. It's as though she's fourteen again, it's the week before Sadie Hawkins, and this moment is painfully rife with nostalgia of the vicious kind. "God, you're gonna hate me."

There's a pause on the other end, and Pam bites her lip. _"…what did you do, Pamela?"_

She grimaces and bows her face further into her palm, her head shaking all the while, as though it would alleviate her embarrassment. It doesn't. "I … I told him."

_"You_** what**_?"_

"Oh, stop! I mean, I told him, like … that I missed him—y'know, being friends with him—and that … that I was sorry," her voice starts out on a giggle, but winds down into a demure place. Pam imagines his face again, shock and confusion, and she feels that sweep of guilt rush over her again. "It was actually really good to get it out."

_"I cannot believe you,"_ Isabel sounds scandalized, and Pam is grateful, because her spirit was beginning to swoop down again upon the recollection. _"That was not the plan."_

"I don't care," Pam says it, and she means it, she even gives a defiant little tilt of her chin to go along with it. "It needed to be said, and I said it. It's just, I'm so tired of having to do the run-around with him. It's been this way since he came back." She dips her coffee spoon in and stirs again, suddenly having lost her appetite and thirst as silence stretches on the other end.

"And … really, if I were to have any expectations of what is to come from it, above all else…" she breathes in and lets it go, her hand pushing the lukewarm mug away from her. "I just want my friendship with him back. I really miss him, Isabel."

It's quiet for a few short seconds more, before Pam listens to Isabel inhale and hears the rustle of her nodding. _"Yeah, I know. Just … don't worry so much about it, okay? I hate that you kill yourself over this stuff." _

"Well, what else am I supposed to do? I mean, it's kind of difficult when—" Her ears vibrates with her cell phone's abrupt buzzing, and Pam jolts in surprise. Withdrawing it from her face, she scans the face of the instrument, her eyes saucering in surprise. Quickly, she moves it back to place beside her ear. "Hey! Uhm, Iz? Jim is calling," she ignores Isabel's gasp on the other end, plowing forward, "You mind if I call you—"

_"Dude, go!"_ Isabel hurries, and Pam barely has time to bid her friend farewell before the line clicks and she's flashing over to the other call.

When it connects, there's no one there.

The face of her phone reads: _Missed Call. Jim. 9:52 AM._

She knows it's stupid of her to do so, but her eyes burn terribly regardless.

--

His phone stays on the counter and away from his hands for the rest of the afternoon, except for when Karen comes by that night for dinner and a movie. He deletes his call log before she arrives, just in case. Not that Jim doesn't trust Karen – she doesn't seem like the kind of girl to rifle through his cell – but there's an agonizing voice in his ear that compels him to do it anyway.

It's the same one that nagged him this morning, until he hit send on _her_ number. Then sanity roped him back in and his thumb dove for the red end tab.

Even still, even despite Karen's big eyes and silky smiles and good lasagna and a Hitchcock DVD he hasn't ever seen, he can't stop his mind from processing and reprocessing _her_ words.

And he remembers looking into the camera, his mouth and stomach fluttering at the very notion, _"If I thought that Pam was interested, I…"_

Jim just tries not to think about it at all. He enjoys the movie with Karen, actually lets everything go for about five minutes throughout. As she gets up and rounds the couch, her fingernails graze the back of his head, and her soft footsteps carry her into the kitchen behind him. It's a soothing moment, and he'll be sad when it passes.

"Hey, you want a beer?" He hears her call from the fridge.

"Of course," he replies, as though it were the most obvious thing. Jim's satisfied with her giggle.

He listens to the cap _fzz_ open and Karen saunters around the arm on his side, and he sees her settle there. A silent alarm goes off in his head, there's something that tips him off, he's not sure what. It's how she sits, or the angle of her hand, but Jim looks all the way up to her face, and he finds what he expected - Karen staring down at him with this hard sort of look. He swallows.

"What did you and Pam really talk about the other night?"

Her question is spoken with a quiet resolution. Karen's not afraid, he doesn't think, but she's definitely not stupid either. As she passes him the beer, Jim takes a quick swig and makes an uncertain, if not confused, face up at her. "Not much."

Karen snorts and he winces. (_Can't get anything by her, can he?_) "Not really the best answer, Jim."

She shifts away from him and as he sighs, she deposits herself on the couch beside him, still wearing that determined expression. He bows his head and picks at the label of his brew, mulling over the variations he could give her that would either postpone or prolong this inevitable conversation.

In the end, he decides that the truth would probably do him best. To her credit, Karen is open to his explanation of the exchange, sparing him of her typical interruptions as she listens with probably more intent than he can really ever recall since their time together. When he concludes, he looks up, hoping he won't find her fierce and bitter.

Instead, there's a bemused look there in her pretty face, as though she finally understood the punch line of a joke. But he can see her eyes soften around the edges, and he thinks he knows what's coming before she's even said it. "Do … you miss her, too?"

The only way he knows to diffuse this is to lean into her mouth and kiss away her doubt. She moans relief and Jim tries to detach himself from Cary Grant, Brazillian Nazis, and Pam Beesly. Karen is happy to oblige him.

While Karen is pressed soundly against him late into the evening, he does his best not to fully construct all the different scenarios that spring unwanted in his mind. Ways where they could have reconciled completely and not so halfheartedly, ways he imagined in the dark of his room only years ago (_really not that long ago_), and ways that would've ended the evening in tears, for both of them.

A part of him wishes that she would've just let her phone go to voicemail, but he doesn't know what he would've said.

--

Pam's smile is devastating when he wanders into the office a couple minutes late on Monday. It's the same welcoming grin she's always given him; the one that he likes to think she shows only to him. He doesn't think Pam has ever shown that kind of enthusiasm for anyone else in the office.

Maybe that's just his ego. Maybe he needs to slow his role.

"I mean, it's not like she declared her love for me, or anything," he nonchalantly brushes it off to the camera during his interview that morning. "We just agreed that we're good friends and, uh … that we shouldn't let 'certain events' get in the way of that."

He pats his knee, cants his head, and twists his mouth to the side for the camera. "And there you go."

--

"Yeah, we talked for a minute," Pam interviews with her head bobbing vigorously and her eyes darting everywhere but the lens as it focuses in on her. "I mean, it was nice. We're good friends, you know, and we always have been, so, uhm…" She trails off, her train of thought taking a shortcut and rerouting itself when she makes eye contact with the unconvinced camera crew. She blushes and shrugs as innocently as possible.

"Really, though, I don't want to elaborate on it? Not 'cause, uhm—" Pam shakes her head, starting over as she tilts her head toward her right shoulder, "I just think, we're good friends, and I don't want to make this seem like it's something it's not."

Her fingers wrinkle up the edge of her skirt as she locks her ankles together. "That's … that's kind of it."

--

Roy comes up at noon and asks how she is, what's she doing later. Pam sighs and forces out a smile, one she hopes says no. It seems to do the trick, since he's backing out of the office in under a minute. She thinks she sees Jim's head move out of the corner of her eye, but then again, she could just be fooling herself.

Personally, though? She's pretty sure that she's getting really good at understanding him from this angle.

--

"She, uh, didn't really say much about Roy," Jim shrugs and makes his 'dunno' face, pulling is mouth down cluelessly as his eyebrows soar high into his bangs. "I guess he tried to woo her or something with a song at Phyllis' wedding?"

He shrugs a shoulder, really bites hard into his cheek to keep from grinning even just the tiniest bit. "Yeah, I, uh, I don't know. That's between them, I guess."

He'd never admit it, not even to himself, but when Pam doesn't return Roy's goodbye as he leaves the office, Jim gets a similar rush like that of winning a blue ribbon at Field Day in elementary school.

Yeah. Old habits.

--

Pam decides to go on break before Jim and Karen do. It would just be awkward, and that's not exactly a scenario she'd like to entertain right now. Sure, she hasn't said more than four words to Jim (_literally, "hey, how's it going?"_) since the other night and maybe she _is_ getting a little worried, but adding Karen to the equation probably wouldn't make things better.

Especially since she's sure Karen's been eyeballing her from across the room all morning, and not in a curious _'where'd she get that blouse?'_ or _'what did she do to her hair?'_ kind of way.

So, Pam just makes her tea and she gets her yogurt and she sits in the break room with Oscar and Toby.

They have a nice, thorough discussion about Marjane Satrapi and her graphic novel _Persepolis_. She really had no idea how insightful they could be, or that they have so much in common when it comes to literature. It's one of the most fulfilling conversations she can ever remember having in the office.

Well, one that wasn't involving Jim, of course.

--

They're laughing together when they step into the break room, Karen pushing good-naturedly at Jim's back as he drags his heels in front of her. "God, stop acting like you're five, Halpert," she reprimands weakly, brandishing her forefinger at him around her Soup at Hand.

"So harsh," Jim mumbles in artificial shock, all around a smile and a jangle of his handful of quarters. He returns her playful scowl with a wink as he ducks between the tables, headed for the farthest vending machine. He slides each piece of change in hastily, every one clunking loudly as they are deposited.

For half a moment, he is sorely tempted give in and pick out the Grape.

"Whose is this?"

Karen's query lifts his head, and Jim is caught immediately off-guard.

She turns the teapot around in her hands, admiring its shiny turquoise paint, the daintiness of the handle, and she is unaware of Jim's awe. "It's cute," she muses, setting it down and opening the lid. Her face pulls downward in a frown at its contents. "Oh, there's water. Someone's using it."

An unconcerned noise filters from her throat as she leaves the teapot abandoned on the counter and pops her soup cup into the microwave. There are a couple of obnoxious beeps before the appliance begins to hum, and Karen says something to him as she backs out of the break room. But all Jim can make out is the white noise that surrounds that unassuming little kettle.

Before Karen comes back, he decides, and he lets the pad of his index finger press the purple button at the top.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Went a little different in the setup to this chapter, since I felt like the cutaways throughout the day felt like a better pacing than staying in one long scene than the last chapter.

Hope y'all still like this one! It's getting really fun to write for...


	4. Chapter 4

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 4_

For the last few days, ever since he'd first seen its resurfacing, Jim's been almost too keenly aware of the comings and goings of that teapot. He knows that Pam usually uses it twice a day: once in the morning, once at lunchtime, and she always keeps it at her desk in the in-between. Jim can't say why, and refuses to really dwell on it, but it's very important that he knows where that teapot is throughout the day.

He pays careful attention as Pam walks quickly from the kitchen to her desk, the little teapot guarded safely between both hands. She's got it drawn up to her chest, like she's trying to keep it out of view from everyone. He pretends like he doesn't watch her, which he has always been fairly good at, and waits for the squeak of her chair behind reception.

It's his cue, and he braces himself before rising from his desk. Jim grabs a random sheet of paper from the pile tipping precariously at the edge of his desk, and he starts for the copier like it's his goal. It's like running a play on the court; all motions and memorization for a game that he doesn't know the name to. He chews at his lower lip as he keeps up the charade, hesitating only for a second before he punches the keys at the copier and prays it kicks into life.

When it whirs loudly, he turns and starts the familiar journey toward the counter where she sits, and his fingers almost reflexively dig into the jelly bean jar at his right upon arrival. She looks up sharply with pretty eyes and Jim debates seriously about turning right back around.

Pam smiles just so at realization that it's him and not some other unwelcome visitor (right?) and he clears his throat around a lemon and a cherry and lets his eyes gravitate toward the turquoise pot. _Make this work._ "Hey," he greets, feeling like a buffoon and thinking that Karen's probably staring daggers behind him. He sees Pam's gaze flicker briefly beyond his shoulder, and he knows it, now. "I'm bored," Jim clarifies off her momentary confusion and wariness. "What's up?"

"Oh, uh … faxes," Pam half-laughs, like she's not sure it's the appropriate reaction, and she waves the Dunder Mifflin logoed sheet in front of her. "And, y'know." When he shakes his head, clueless to her meaning, she smiles deviously and flips up a legal pad. There on the top sheet, she has drawn an exaggerated caricature of Dwight with a ridiculous English mustache.

Involuntarily, Jim snorts loudly and slides a hand over his mouth, his whole body shaking with barely contained laughter. Pam looks delighted, and his heart skips a beat like picking up a game of hopscotch. He almost hiccups between the two distinct elated emotions and his jelly beans.

"Pretty accurate, huh?" She cheekily questions, and she laughs quietly as Jim squints playfully between the real thing hovering over in Accounting and her rendition.

"It's uncanny. I think you've captured his true spirit."

"Right? I'm doing everyone, I think."

"That's definitely what she said," his finger points at her and she scoffs as he continues fluidly, "aaand do we get to keep them?"

He wonders if she's drawn him yet. If he has a silly mustache or funny hat. He really needs to know, suddenly. Index finger tip down on the countertop, he tries to appear stern. "I expect mine, on my desk, promptly at 5, Beesly."

By the way Pam blushes, he thinks maybe yes, she did draw him, and that makes his fingers itch to snatch up her book and flip through her doodles. But she sets the yellow stack back by her keyboard and rolls her shoulders again, and he thinks it's fun to watch her try to act coy. "We'll just have to wait and see. Really, I haven't decided yet. I was thinking of leaving them for everyone to find in weird places. Like the fridge and--"

"Oh, then do that," Jim tells her simply and without hesitation, nodding his head over her short burst of laughter.

"No, no! I dunno yet! Like I said, we'll see," she keeps on grinning like the sun lives behind her teeth, but the moment he looks up into her eyes, he sees that smile fade and he worries that he's let this moment last too long, or that Karen's glaring behind him. But then, he notices: her shoulders hunch in, her chin dips down, and her eyes can't find a spot to linger on. _She's got something else to say, doesn't she?_

"Hey, uhm…" she begins, and god, how does he know this? Jim sees her hand shuffle some papers at the side, before her fingers withdraw and she looks back up at him uncertainly. "I don't know if you're … busy—I mean, or if you have plans—" Her eyes dart up, over his shoulder, but quickly she turns back to her papers. Hastily, as though deciding last minute, she snatches up a bright blue sheaf and presents it to him, laying it flat on the counter between his elbows.

"What's this?" He asks as his eyes rove over the bold font.

"I'm having an art show," she blushes at his quick look of surprise, her hand waving his overthinking off. "I mean, not just for—it's for this art class I'm taking—"

"Pam!" He exclaims before she's done, simply overcome with pride for her. Real, true pride. It's unfounded and illogical for him to feel this way, he knows, since she's not his girlfriend and he's not sure they're even friends at all, but it's like he can't stop himself. It bubbles up like her sudden smile regardless and her joy is like a drug. He barely thinks back about a year ago, when she'd come to him with an idea that someone put in her head, with a seemingly unimportant pamphlet, but to her it meant a future and to him it meant her and that's just how this feels now.

Jim smiles wide like a mile, flourishing the flyer at her. "_This_ is amazing. Seriously."

"No, really, it's nothing," she blushes and ducks her head, all humble and secretly pleased. She's the definition of adorable, and he doesn't really realize he's blatantly admiring her where everyone can see. "I'm just going to show a few of my new watercolors. It's not big at all, there probably won't even be a lot of people there."

"Definitely big," he assures her, and she sparkles right in front of him. "And you should invite everyone, it'll be cool."

"I plan to, yeah, hopefully," she nods along with him, looking at a flyer of her own now as her brow furrows. Her eyes jump back up to his face and his eyebrows hitch in surprise at the suddenness of her attention. "Really, though, if you can't make it, you don't have to go." Jim recognizes her uneasy glance back to the far corner of the office and his high drops a little as her face follows suit.

"Oh, no," he turns his head, looks over his shoulder, and notices Karen focusing on her computer just a second too late. She's not happy, and suddenly, he's not either. "I'll, uh, yeah, I'll have to see what Karen wants to do," he coughs and makes a face around the sentence, the sound of it sour to his own ears, "But definitely, we'll try to make it."

While Pam seems to falter at first, his assurance and promise look to uplift her, and it soothes the uneasy rumble in his gut that tells him he might not be being completely honest with her. And obviously he's expressed too much, and the energy hangs electric and toxic between them. He fumbles, doesn't know what else to do but grin unsteadily back at her and pat the counter before he retreats toward his desk.

"Uhm, Jim?"

Her voice is quiet but he hears it loud in both ears and whips around. "Yeah?"

Pam points toward the copier that has long since stalled. "Don't forget your copies."

He laughs self-deprecatingly, completely misses her shy smile down at her monitor, and he starts over to the machine. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Angela grab a bright pink post-it note from the top of the divider between her and Kevin. For some reason, the smirk stretching her dour mouth strikes Jim as unnerving as she makes a merry tic mark on the slip.

* * *

**Author's Note: **This chapter's a little shorter than the others, but I expressed what I needed and I really like it. They're so cuuuuute. Next chapter: Art Show and MORE ANGST! Whoo!


	5. Chapter 5

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 5_

She spent two hours getting ready and has been standing in front of a wall with her name on it for about half that time. Her sleeves are beginning to itch and her forehead is damp under the fluorescent lights and her ears are burning because people are talking animatedly all around her but … no body's talking to her.

Except the camera crew. They came. She gives them a look that's somewhere between _"thank you"_ and _"I know why you're really here"_ and they smile back from behind their lenses with _"I'm sorry, don't feel bad"_.

Lisa, one of the documentary girls, told her she liked her painting of flowers – specifically, she liked the pink watercolors she used. It was the nicest thing she'd heard all day.

Pam swallows, and it doesn't quite make it all the way down her throat. There's something stuck there. She's pretty sure it's her pride.

--

"Are you going?" Karen asks him in a voice that tries to be uninterested, but comes off sounding clipped. She lifts the blue flyer from his counter for reference, pinched at the top corner between her forefinger and thumb, held away at arms length. Jim almost wants to glare at her.

He opts to duck his head from her and shrug, his hands finding his back pockets. "Uh, well, I thought about it. D'you want to?" He feels like he's obligated to ask her, even though he knows when he looks up, she's going to have that look on her face.

Jim takes a chance and—yep. He was right. How did he get so good at reading people? Or maybe it's just women. Karen's got her mouth folded to the side, like she's considering the option, but he's almost 83 percent sure she's really debating the best way to tell him 'no.' She shrugs and deposits the slip back on his counter, her eyes following as it floats its way back down to the surface.

"Not really," she tells him frankly and with no hidden meaning. "I kind of just wanted to curl up and watch something on television. Or maybe go to the movies?" Now, there's hidden meaning. It slips in like a thief, snatching up her honesty and replacing it with guardedness and suspicion. She says in so many words and with a flicker of her lashes, _You should agree with me._

He hefts his left shoulder noncommittally and starts for the bathroom. "Maybe," he mutters, as his fingers hit the light switch and he hears her open the fridge.

--

The art show closes at 10 and it's about 8:30. Pam's fingers are sweating and she hasn't quite figured out that he's not gonna show up – she's still got that last little leg of hope to stand on. She pulls her wrist up to her face to examine her watch face, and when she drops it again, Roy is standing in front of her.

He's cleaned up and he looks good. Shaven, smelling like Old Spice, and wearing a nice overshirt she remembers buying him like two years ago that, at the time, he had said, _"C'mon, I'll never need anything like this, babe."_ He obviously took his time and had specific intentions; it's a lot like the last few times she's seen him, but something about this encounter feels … different. Pam sniffs in deeply and fights off a wiggling reminder of what she put 9 years of effort into.

Still, even she can't deny the surprise that flourishes abruptly in her stomach at realization that Roy is _here_ at _her art show_ and she _didn't even tell him_.

A real smile cracks at the corner as she accepts his large hand and gives a warm shake, allows herself to be drawn in for a one-armed embrace. His hand is hot like her cheeks when he tells her complimentary things like _"you look … great"_ and _"wow, look at that"_ when he sees the wall of watercolors behind her, like he appreciates them.

--

_9:38._

Jim's about worn a hole in his jeans from drumming his fingers at his knee, and he's almost certain he's developing an ulcer in the shape of Pam's face. Karen's settled up beside him, tucked underneath his arm as much as he's allowed her. His other hand, however, is frantic and anxious at the cap of his knee, and when he hears the clock click that second _tick_ into 9:39, he pushes up quickly from the couch.

Karen startles and fumbles to right herself, looking more than a bit miffed at his haste. "What? What's wrong?"

He's shaking his head wryly as he rounds the couch and reaches for his coat at the hook by the door. Her face, when he sees it, has morphed into a quieter expression, something patient and cool. He's worried she'll figure it all out before he has time to set up a white lie between them.

"I just remembered I've gotta grab some milk and coffee from up the road," he jerks his thumb behind him as he paces backward to the portal. "I really don't want either of us to be a zombie tomorrow morning." She hints that she may smile, but he puts up his hand to ward such a terrible thing away. "I'll be back in a couple minutes. Order pizza?"

She tilts her head back some to allow better observational space between them. He's squeamish on what she may determine, but whatever it is, she grants him a nod. "Kay, but I'm choosing where we order from. No more of that local crap." Karen starts for the phone book, unaware that he's already halfway out when she adds, "Ooh, pick me up some gummy sharks, too?"

Jim doesn't have time to holler "okay" before he's all but slamming the door and sprinting to his car, set of keys already in hand.

--

Michael's jabbering on about picture frames as he walks her out to the parking lot. He's saying, "My god, look at it! It really looks like a photograph! It's going right by my office. I wonder if Linens and Things is open at this hour…"

His sincerity is all that's keeping her afloat.

Pam feels Michaels' hand touch her elbow in a way that reminds her of Roy's niece and she smiles over at him. "You really got it, Pam," he tells her with a voice that sounds ages away and not at all like the Michael Scott she thinks she knows. "I'm proud of you." For the second time that night, and probably second time ever in her years at Dunder Mifflin, Pam willingly accepts a hug from Michael and returns it in kind.

He pats her back a little lower than she'd prefer and so she draws away with a bashful, nervous laugh. "Uh, thanks, Michael. I'm really glad you came out, I appreciate it," she pats his arm and smiles fondly at his wave goodbye, parrots his goodnight. He practically skips to his car, the folder with her painting in it held tight under his arm.

She stands in the parking lot long after he's pulled out, considering his enthusiasm, and the multitude of confliction prickling from inside. This overwhelming sense of disappointment, in herself, in her colleagues, in her life: it's smothering. She strains to breathe above the pressure of it, already feeling tears pooling under her lashes, and she really wishes she hadn't bothered getting so prettied up if this is going to be the end result.

A nearby vehicle opens and she startles into action, because Pam's the kind of girl who doesn't really like to hang out too long in parking lots by herself - especially not when she's on the verge of some kind of emotional display.

Her keys nearly tumble out of her fingers when Jim calls her name, and Pam turns sharply at the hip. Her heart buckles in on itself as she watches him jog across the lot with his coat pulled tight, his hair a little more rumpled than usual. Part of her pangs horribly at the notion that he maybe just thought to come last minute, that he forgot, and so what does that mean?

"Hey," she acknowledges his presence with careful study of his stiff limbs, not allowing herself the opportunity to see his friendly attempt at a smile. When she gives it two seconds, Pam glances upward, finding him pale and uneasy under the single lamp light. He's guilty and she doesn't want to feel better about things just right now. "What are you doing here?"

Jim coughs into his shoulder before he really looks down at her, his chest still burning from the impromptu dash over and from much, much more than that. "I, uh … wanted to see your show," he admits lamely, well aware of the momentary flash across her face, the tightness in her shoulders. "Obviously, I'm ... a little late for that."

"Yeah," Pam just agrees, a chill racing down her arms and to her fingertips when she feels him stealing glances at the portfolio case in her hand. "Don't worry, though," she offers him a quick look, her head jerking harder than she'd like. "You weren't the only one. I mean, it was just Michael." She pauses, very much disliking his look of offended surprise. "Oh, and Roy."

Instantaneously, there's a fire lit under him at that name, at _Roy_, and almost automatically Jim's dissecting what that second-long syllable could mean coming from her. His consideration doesn't last long, as he recognizes the rejection clearer than the break of dawn written on her face and in her suddenly heavy limbs. She's being honest with him – she really did do this alone. Swiftly, it shifts, and the flare isn't so much about Roy anymore. "Wait, so … so nobody else? Are you serious?"

The painful furrow of his brow has her turning back to her trunk to unlock it, her head shaking involuntarily to fend off his concerns. "Yeah, but it's fine, I didn't really—-it's not like I expected anything. It's totally cool."

"Pam…"

"No, really," she turns her head, throws him a weak smile that feels bitter as she forces it out. "It's okay. I mean, at least you tried. So, that's…" Her throat clogs up and she has to turn back to her interior to discreetly clear it.

Pam glances back at him, and he's this huge, lanky package of grief and pity and woe for her. He rarely looks happy anymore, she thinks. And what she must appear to him most days? Whatever happened to the grinning, laughing, pranking Jim? And what happened to her, what broke them?

Was it really love that ruined them?

_Good god, she needs to get home._

She sighs thoroughly and lifts her portfolio up, starting for the trunk, but his hand comes out to stop it. Pam stares at his intrusion, bites her lip at the new way he's studying her now.

"Can I still see them?"

Her breath comes up a little short at such a seemingly insignificant question. It sounds just like a thousand other questions she'd wish he'd ask her, but he never ever seems like he will. And now here it is, blatant on his face as she nods and he unfolds her portfolio in her dry trunk and opens up her work. Her watercolors feel so much less than they were this morning, but now Jim's looking at them with something akin to wonder, his mouth hanging slightly open and his eyes sharp as he considers each detail.

She wants to understand what he's mouthing to himself, but she doesn't have the courage to duck down and look at his lips as they move of their own volition.

After he delicately flips to the last piece, examines it, fingers it like it's priceless, Jim turns to her with a half-smile, and he seems almost winded. "That's … I've never seen this kind of stuff from you, Pam."

"It's newer stuff," she demures, her head bowing. "I'm still working on it; I'm not that good."

"No," he shuts her out firmly, and it almost knocks her down. "This is … it's amazing. I really can't believe you can do this." She looks up at him, and he's staring at her closed portfolio with wide eyes. He sounds so sure, that his awe is absolutely proper in its place, and like he can't imagine why she's so humble about it. Jim turns to face her, his features having contorted the moment he meets her eyes.

"Pam, I am really, really sorry I didn't come earlier." He's wounded all over; she can see it nearly as potently as she feels it. Even though she's shaking her head, denying him, he still goes on looking like he's going to break in half.

Pam cants her head and offers him a dewy smile of her own, conscious of the wetness behind her eyes. She's certain he can see it under the soft glow above, and maybe that's why he looks so desperate. "Oh, don't be," she assures him in what she thinks is a breezy tone. "It's silly, Jim."

"It's not." She rights herself at the rigidity in his voice, it's so brittle coming out. That staring now, it levels her heart, and she's reminded at once of choppy seas, biting wind, and the smell of fresh water all around her – and that look, burning right through her.

It's quieter around them this time; the soundswitch for nighttime has been turned on low and Pam can distinctly make out her heartbeat in between her ears. She knows this moment better than she should. She's stood here so many times with him; they've got to have treaded a hole in the ground beneath them by now.

"It's late," she disengages from his gaze, her breath shaking out. He dips his chin down to where she can't see him, but she knows he saw it coming. What else could it have been?

"Uh, yeah," Jim finally musters and weakens a smile at her. The same one he's given her for years and years on nights just like this. They've done this way too many times, she thinks. "I should, uh, probably get going, too. But, hey," he points to her trunk, and then lifts a thumbs up. "Great work, Pam. Seriously. You done good."

She laughs, because it's what she's supposed to do in this situation. Her hand waves somewhere at her side and she turns-- then stops, because if she doesn't say it, she's made a loss, and what good is it making changes if you're just gonna--

"Jim, hey?" He pivots at her timid voice, his eyebrows cinched together in silent query. "I, uhm--" Everything feels so dizzyingly familiar with him, she's said it all a hundred times before. "I just wanted to say thanks. For stopping by, I mean. It really ... it means a lot." She hopes that he can see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice. She hopes he knows what she's really trying to say. She's trying desperately to force it out in every way her body possibly can, because she just doesn't know if she can say it all out loud.

What sliver he may have intercepted, however, brings a smile to Jim's lips, and her heart relaxes and flushes peace throughout her when he nods his understanding, no matter how minimal it may be. "Anytime, Beesly," he tells her with what she is positive is the utmost affection. His eyes crinkle - she can see it from here, and it makes her fingers tremble - when he gives her a little wag of his open palm.

Pam climbs into her car, makes unnecessary adjustments until she can find the strength of mind to put the key in the ignition. When she glances in the rearview, she sees him sitting in his car, just like her. Waiting.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Art Show angst, hooray! I got a 100% on my Child Psych exam and thought I'd reward myself by churning this puppy out. ;D And while I didn't mention Oscar and Gil, they DID stop by her art show and offered similar critique as they did in the show. Pammy just doens't want to talk about it right now. ;)


	6. Chapter 6

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 6_

It's not a date, because he has a girlfriend.

This is Jim's mantra between laughs and looks at lunch with Pam the weekend following her art show. They made tentative plans that Friday, without really verbalizing or solidifying anything at all, other than the fact they were both _Reno 911! _fans and didn't that movie look funny? It was all in that language they used to speak, in vague agreements and nods and looks, that Jim was sure he had forgotten.

But he had understood, and evidently so did she, because on Saturday afternoon he's sitting at a table in the diner closest to the Steamtown 8, and Jim feels a pleasant jolt ripple down his spine when he sees her slip into the restaurant. _She's gorgeous, _he thinks involuntarily when she strolls in, her head whipping this way and that to find him amid the midday crowd. He waves a hand to her, signals her over, and he's not prepared for the illumination of her smile.

He makes a conscious effort to avoid cataloging everything different about _this_ Pam and the Pam he knows at the office. Like the way her hair is less haphazard, the way her clothes fit her better … and that they most certainly do. She leans in for a friendly, quick embrace and sits across from him at the table, a beaming grin full of white teeth and anxiety that he definitely shares.

But this is not a date, because he has a girlfriend. Who Pam is asking about, right now, reminding him of the guilty storm cloud lurking in his middle.

"Oh, Karen?" Jim comes to and shakes his head, working his straw in and out of his fountain drink. "She decided to head down to Maryland for the weekend. She hasn't seen her mom since the merger, so—"

"Oh, oh," Pam nods her understanding, and Jim takes note of the interesting knit of her brow, the glance down at her food that she really hasn't touched since they ordered. "Well, that's good. Visiting her parents, I mean. Why, uhm," she looks up abruptly, letting the rest of her question tumble out awkwardly, "Why didn't you go?"

Jim inadvertently bends the top of his straw, breaking it. "That's…"

Karen had asked him to go. He remembers her flushed face – the one right after eager movements and heavy, staccato breathing – and the harmless way she had posed the request that he simply let fade into the darkness of his bedroom. He also remembers a similar redness flooding her features during their consequent argument the next morning, over the same request, when he had much more forcefully shot her down.

His mouth turns up and he doesn't meet Pam's eyes as he supplies, "It's not really the time, y'know? I don't think we're really at 'parents' yet." He peeks up at her, only to find her watching him with such rapt attention that he's positive she can see right through him. But if she does, Pam's courteous enough to let it go, and her smile and nod of acceptance sate the irregular pounding in his chest.

--

She'd call the fluttering feeling inside her stomach 'butterflies' when they stride into the cinema and ogle movie posters together, but that would imply that this is something that it's not.

See, Pam's buying her own movie ticket, and he's just getting her a Wild Cherry Pepsi out of courtesy. They sit close to a group of obnoxious teenagers who are texting and chatting noisily throughout the whole film, and this movie is overflowing with delinquent humor that Pam almost feels bashful to watch alongside Jim.

So, yeah, even though her hands are feeling antsy and there's a fleeting moment where she's tempted by the flicker of the movie screen across his face and neck, and even though his arm feels so warm when it brushes hers on the same rest, Pam just has way too many reminders of what this really is (_that is, not a date_) even when neither of them can exactly remember that one girl from Maryland with long brown hair.

--

"Don't you dare," she brandishes her finger up at him as they cross the parking lot, people filtering in and out around them. They pause so she can look determined and so he can take her all in. "We do not speak of Paul Rudd in such an ill manner, Jim."

"_We? _" He repeats on a chuckle, raising an eyebrow up at her. "Like, the Royal 'we' or—"

"No, like the Scranton Legion of Paul Rudd Fans 'we'," she counters and he coughs out a laugh at her upturned nose and feigned appropriateness. "I can't believe you've never heard of us. We are a very proud group."

"_Wow, _" Jim murmurs as their feet set to motion again and his hand rakes through his hair. "I can see that. You seem … very dedicated in your mission to protect Mr. Rudd's name."

Pam twirls on her heel and walks backwards as they near her baby blue Prius, a cheeky little smile turning at the corners of her lips. Jim finds his breath taken away at the sheer adorability of her tiny dimples. "You're damn right. So, I won't have you sullying it. Besides, really, how can you _not_ like him?"

"It's not that I don't _like_ him, it's just … the appeal? From women? I don't see it, Pam," Jim gestures toward her and Pam shakes her head at him, almost pityingly. "No, seriously! The guy's like, 50--"

"He is not—"

"—And the only good movies he's ever been in are _Anchorman_ and _The 40-Year-Old Virgin. _In which," Jim holds up his forefinger, stifling Pam's readied contest, "he didn't even really star."

Pam narrows her eyes playfully and Jim lets himself have this moment with her in a way he hasn't in months. He relishes in the way she fights her smile, the way her cheeks are pink and bright even under the dullness of nighttime, and he soars with recognition that she's playing along with him unthinkingly. It feels almost like winning.

"You," she points at him, "are forgetting _Clueless_, one of the single greatest movies ever, in which he was the lead romantic, and--"

"A pedophile," Jim addends fluidly, and she laughs sharply and looks scandalized. "But, please, continue."

"You are _just_—" She gapes openly at him, her eyes sparkling so that, god, it just makes him ache all over and she's like the sweetest thing he's ever looked upon in the world. Even when she's defending movie stars who don't even make his top ten list. "He totally was not a pedophile in that movie! He was in love with her, and it was cute!"

He folds his mouth and squints hard in speculation, playing this game and missing it sorely. Jim's got to lean against the side of her hatchback to keep upright as wave after wave of adoration for her and the need for her laughter keeps crashing down on him. "I will only absolve him because it was Alicia Silverstone, and no man can resist--"

"Here we go," Pam drags out a sigh, her hands thrown in supplication to the sky. "Not you too, Jim!"

"Oh, wait, wait!" Jim stands on his own and braces a hand on her car, leans in closer to her as though to examine her, and he tries hard to disregard the pink blotches staining the fair skin at her collar. "So, you can preach about the amazing, albeit non-existent, talent and attraction of Paul Rudd, but the moment I say something about Alicia Silverstone, who is certifiably gorgeous—"

"Certifiably? I'm sorry to do this, Jim, but: _as if, _" Pam cheeks and arches her brow significantly. Jim groans as the reference clicks, and they both laugh loudly and clearly. It choruses above them and, long after it dies out, it's still ringing in Jim's ears.

Their chests are still heaving from the warmth of it, and Jim is feeling oversensitive, hyped up on something like a cocktail of adrenaline, infatuation, and the pretty color of Pam's eyes. "You are… something else, Beesly," he chuckles lowly and ducks his eyes to the ground, skipping out on the look of wonder that briefly crosses her face. He steals a glance at her, and his smile softens. "It has been very cool, hanging out with you today."

Pam blushes and sets her hip against her driver's side door, a bashful smile peeking at the front of her lips. "Yeah, yeah, I think so, too. I'm really glad you invited me out," she meets his eyes and _yeah, it's still there, _so she tilts her line of vision to the side, just past his ear. "If you hadn't, I'd probably be taking HG-TV's advice on how to better access the full, potential space of my living room."

They share another, much shorter-lived laugh, because now it's hitting that point in the moment where it's all real and in full color, and Jim's left standing there, looking at her, feeling at a loss. He thinks that at about this time, he'd be rescuing her from their awkward lull, from the definite way he looks at her, from himself; like now. But this Pam is staring at him certainly, like she willingly walked into this instance, and he just doesn't know what to do with that.

His pocket weighs heavily, and all at once he's aware of his cell phone settled against the inside of his pant leg and the first name under 'K'. Jim gulps down air, his cheek hitching with an attempt at a new, uncomfortable smile. "Uh, but anyway, I should probably get going—"

"Oh," Pam breathes, and he doesn't know how he feels about the way her face breaks a little. "Yeah, me too," she agrees in a voice that doesn't sound sure to him, but like she's just saying it because it's the appropriate thing to be said. He isn't conscious of it, but her hazy agreement makes his temper rise and his nostrils flare. "I have to, uhm, get up early tomorrow, anyway, so—"

"Yeah," Jim just nods and pushes back a step, the urgency to put distance between them catapulting upward in his body. "But today was fun, Pam, we should definitely—"

"We should, we should," Pam's nodding before he's finishing, one hand fishing blindly in her purse for her keys and the other already around the car door handle. "Thank you, again, Jim."

He pauses in his backward march from her, caught observing the space he's put in between them. Jim thinks himself kind of stupid for his hurry and for his paranoia. His phone isn't ringing, Karen's not in Scranton (much less Pennsylvania), and Pam's looking at him with eyes that he half-imagines are telling him things he's wanted to know from her for a very long time. But this is really fucking silly, and he shouldn't be here - not yet and not with her.

Jim clears his throat and bows his head, trying to slow down his overworked mind to where thinking about her doesn't become such a hassle. He tips his face up and he sees her still hesitating, and he is, of course, inundated with everything about her. _It never fails. _"I'll, uh- I'll see you on Monday, though. Have a good Sunday?"

She nods and smiles kindly at him, and he's thankful and disappointed all at once. The smart thing to do would be to leave then; it's the perfect moment to turn and walk away. Pam's already ducking into her car and her ignition sounds, but even so, he is struck terribly with the need to have that last, final fix before he lets her go. Just one last smile, one last look.

Somehow, Jim manages to hold his tongue as she pulls out of her parking space, as she waves a hand out her window and he just settles on waving back. Her back lights flood the ground and wash over his feet with a bright, vibrant red, and it stings his eyes.

Before Pam's turning back out onto the avenue, he is withdrawing his cell phone from his pants pocket, the necessity to call Karen and validate his place in the world is almost intolerable.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Okay, so this is kind of a filler chapter, but it's been floating around in my head and I had to put it down. And I wanted to do Jim/Pam banter! Besides, I'm still constructing the next chapter that goes along with _Cocktails_ and that requires some rewatching of the episode ... gasp, oh no! ;) Luckily, I'm on Spring Break, so I might be able to churn out the next chapter pretty soon. We'll see. I'm pretty excited about it!


	7. Chapter 7

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 7_

Pam sighs deeply, her pen tip tapping at the printer paper splayed in front of her. She's oblivious to the world around her, with glazed eyes set somewhere at the farthest inch of Jim's shoulder. Beneath her fingertips, she's got a half-finished sketch of the bullpen, with Dwight and Ryan carefully omitted. She just hasn't gotten around to them is all.

She doesn't start until Michael's pounding childishly on her desk, demanding her (and the rest of the office's) attention. Immediately, she levels a wary look upon him, her mouth hanging open in momentary dismay as she slips a manila folder covertly over her handiwork.

Then Michael's moving his mouth, but she only sees his red shirt and tie, and that's when she remembers. Her heart sinks.

As the camera zooms in on her face from the right, she shoots them a beseeching look.

_Help me, _she mouths desperately.

She's can easily make out Jim's shoulders shaking with quiet laughter as he turns back around to face his computer monitor. It makes her feel a little better.

--

"So, I guess David Wallace, the CFO?" Pam looks at the producer for recognition, then the camera once again. "Uhm, anyway, he's having this … party-soirée thing and, uhm…" She trails off, shaking her head as she does so. Her shoulders lift almost inordinately so that she can fill her lungs to capacity before she lights up and pretends to be merry. "I get to be Michael's chaperone for the night!"

She pauses, glares at nothing in particular, then gives the camera a weary frown. "I really don't know why I'm going. Michael said he needed 'arm candy' until Jan gets there, and I--" Pam breathes out through her nose, shrugs a shoulder, and seems completely lost as she searches for an appropriate follow-up through the window across the room.

Her eyes drift back to the camera lens, and it's painfully obvious that Pam is fighting a losing battle with herself. "I guess I'd feel kind of responsible if something really awful were to happen to Michael."

Pam hesitates and the furrow of her brow increases as she adds, "Or to anyone else, because of Michael."

--

"Pamanama Canal," Michael sugars inappropriately, and his peek at the camera and suggestive arch of his eyebrows do not go unnoticed by Pam. "Canal, because you have a—"

"Michael…" Pam exhales a weak warning, her eyes shutting against the inevitable. Already she can feel a throbbing behind her eyes, and it's not even lunchtime.

His laugh is dying out and he clears his throat, another flat palm slapped against the countertop, and Pam jerks back again from the noise. "Are we ready to go? Evidently not," he shuts Pam down before she even has a chance to reply, ignorant to her surprised expression, "since you are not near hot enough to attend a gala at David Wallace's manor. Is this—"

Michael stops to crane his neck and peer over the top of reception, and Pam scoots her chair closer toward her counter to obscure herself from his vision. With a full grimace, Michael glances toward the camera and back. "You're not really going like that, are you? Where's the cleavage, Pam? We have to dress to impress!"

Pam sighs greatly as she tugs her cardigan around her midsection tighter, almost protectively so. "I have my dress and stuff in my car, Michael."

"Well, then _someone _needs to go down to the parking lot, get naked," he breezes, missing everyone's sharp head-turns and Pam's vibrant blushing, "and put on their hottest little number."

Her attention falls quickly across to Jim, horror expressed eloquently through wide hazel eyes, and he obliges her with his signature stare of amusement-meets-surprise.

"Aaand that someone is not going to be me," for the camera, Michael grins and continues. "Because I am already wearing mine."

"Uhm, isn't it … I mean, it's still pretty early," Pam does her best to diffuse this situation, and secretly she's already disliking her ensemble choice for the party – particularly when she thinks of wearing it in front of Michael. How could she not have considered this dilemma before now? "Don't we still have a few hours?"

"Pam, no," Michael points at her, waggles his finger. "It's the early worm gets the … worm, so—"

"Wait, another worm?" Jim queries abruptly from his desk, already angled to better survey the happenings at reception and offer his witty two-cents. "Like, are they friends, or—" He looks past Michael, catches Pam's eye and quirks a smirk at her. It's all she can do not to redden much further.

"It's 'the early bird gets the worm'," Dwight corrects and rises from his desk. "And Michael, I must tell you, I think you are making a terrible mistake bringing Pam with you. I think you should reconsider and take me in her place."

"Dwight. I've already told you, in the event that my wonderful girlfriend, Jan," he turns purposely toward the camera lens upon her name, as though to remind them, "cannot make it tonight, I need to have a back-up with me at this party, and that person requires high heels, boobs," Pam lets her face fall into her hand as Michael gestures not-so-subtly toward her chest, "and … some kind of lip gloss." He stares again at the camera, noting in aside, "Preferably strawberry flavored."

Jim widens his eyes at the camera, knits his brow, tilts his head for effect. "That's … not—"

"I can acquire and match all of those criteria, no problem," Dwight assures even before Michael has fully completed his sentence. "Michael," he starts again, this time much more earnestly, "_ I_ can be your right hand, your wingman. You don't need to bring an ignorant woman with you--"

"Thank you, Dwight," Pam deadpans from her desk.

Jim turns his chair a bit and squints up at Dwight uncertainly. "Hold on. Did you just say you can acquire boobs, 'no problem'?" He affects quotations with his fingers, which promptly elicits a surround-sound snort and giggle from Karen and Pam, respectively.

"Of course. It's easy. You just pour some cow fat and a little bit of grease into a smoothened sack, possibly made of lamb's skin, then insert it--"

Over a chorus of disgusted groans, Michaels is the loudest, and it effectively halts Dwight's hand movements toward his chest. "Ew, ew, gross! Dwight, enough of your sick farm talk! Do you see why I'm not taking you?"

He waves furiously toward the salesman, motioning for him to sit again, and Dwight does so with a downcast expression. "Just-- look, you're not coming! So deal with it, okay? Pam," he's moving toward his office now, sparing her a second glance as both of his hands throw up a '1' and a '5', "you got fifteen minutes before we move out!"

"But, Michael, I'm not--!" Pam's shout barely has time to travel across the bullpen before Michael has slammed the door against her denials.

--

Pam steps out of the downstairs bathroom and rearranges the skirt of her dress, thinking all the while that her cleavage looks far too high up and definitely too full for those to really be _hers. _Did this dress look like this when she tried it on? Sure, she was aiming to impress – not, y'know, Michael or anyone like that – but … did they really look like this?

She looks up and notices the camera. She naturally flushes a sweet pink. "Maybe it's the fluorescent lights?" That's her hopeful suggestion, and she's sticking to it.

"Pam?"

Awkwardly, she twists on her heel, noticing Roy hesitating near the entrance of the warehouse. He looks a little more awestruck than she can ever recall him, perhaps with the exception of senior prom. She'd label his look 'adorable' if it were worn by any other man.

"Oh, hi," she shifts her arms so that they come up over her middle and under her chest, like she has something there to hide, but when his eyes dart down and back again, Pam becomes aware of the effects of her stance. She immediately straightens, her limbs falling to her sides, and she offers an uncomfortable look between the camera lens to her right and her ex-fiancé looming ahead. "This is for that … thing, tonight. With Michael. He, uhm, he invited me along, so-"

"Oh," Roy nods once, if a bit stupidly. Pam's smile stretches somewhat as he hitches up a lopsided grin in return, and he nods in his appraisal of her. "Well, you look … fucking amazing," he exhales long and slow, another careful inspection of her figure drawn in.

Not that she's keeping count.

"Uhm, thanks." She feels suddenly red and burnt all over, and Pam self-consciously tucks a defined curl behind her ear. It's a rewarding feeling, Roy's renewed appreciation of her and her talents (quotes or no quotes), but Pam just doesn't know what to do with it.

"Hey, just, uh," Roy pauses and scratches at the back of his neck, his gaze straying somewhere around Pam's necklace. She lifts a hand to her throat, and his eyes speedily find their way back to her hazel ones. "Just be careful with that dude, okay? I don't trust him."

While his tone is bordering on playful, Pam does take his sentiment to heart. She remembers in that second the very few instances in the past where Roy's protective streak had come through, albeit never once with Michael, and it manages to warm her from the toes and upward.

A moment forgotten flips up in Technicolor; Jim holding her shoulder and her hand behind her desk, they're laughing, and Roy's voice is loud and aggressive from the side—

Pam ducks her head and clears her throat, throwing up the quickest version of a smile that she can. She has to get back upstairs, so that she can look at Jim before he leaves with Karen, so she can not feel guilty right now, so her stomach can stop making such frustrating curly q's when she thinks of such dynamics like the past.

--

"Why are you pouting?"

"I'm not pouting."

"Well, you look like you're pouting."

Karen glowers across the car, and Jim tries not to let his smile hatch. "Believe me, you'd know if I was pouting, Halpert."

"Oh, would I?" He counters cleverly, and he is rewarded by a slug to his shoulder. "Hey, hey! There is no call for domestic abuse." He steals a look askance and notices she still is not budging in her resolute expression. The allotted moment has passed, that time-frame when he can turn Something into Nothing, and he knows she's likely being serious now. The very idea of it makes his shoulders sag. "C'mon, seriously, Karen. Right now?"

"Then when, Jim? When is good for you?" She huffs and crosses her arms, her hair tossing as she turns to stare hard out the window. "I just don't get why you didn't want to come with me."

"Look," Jim begins heavily, already feeling worn out and this conversation hasn't even fully formed. Then again, this is like the seventh rendition of this argument that they've covered in the last two days, and it's getting a little played, in his humble opinion. But he grits his teeth and grips the steering wheel and pretends with the same line he developed while 'hashing' things out over the phone last night. "There is a time for me to meet your parents—"

"Which would've been last weekend, but," Karen bites out and Jim has to really hold on to the wheel. "Obviously, I'm guessing you have another time in mind?"

"Can we not?" It escapes him before he's fully contemplated the consequences of such an abrasive request. He looks over and sees her tense, then release. She seems defeated, and while he should be relieved, it's not a look her appreciates on her. Instantly, regret fills him.

"Whatever," comes her terse mumble after a several pregnant seconds.

Jim sighs and flexes his fingers. "We'll talk about it when we get home tonight, okay? I just don't wanna do this now," he half-whispers when he recognizes that she's trying hard not to pay attention to him. In her reflection off the window, he can see her glassy eyes riveted blankly on the nothing that passes them by.

He glances at his radio clock and notices the time and, with an unconscious tipping at the corners of his mouth, he thinks instead of the ways that Pam has perhaps kept herself occupied for the last handful of hours with Michael.

Jim wonders if they played I Spy or the Alphabet Game.

He hopes she'll say 'both.'

--

Thus far, Pam had not yet been proven wrong for a single one of her assumptions in the days' events. Upon sight of her cocktail dress (_ that is, what it did to the rest of her body_), Michael giggled and gawked like a sixth-grade boy at his first dance. It didn't subside until halfway to New York. About the time that Jan called.

"Please, don't get me started on that," Pam groans to the camera crew as she taps her toe impatiently outside the Wallace mansion. Prefacing with a cautious glance over her shoulder, her expression turns quite dire as she stage-whispers to the camera, "I'm not exactly sure, and I don't really have a reason as to why, but I think maybe Jan hates me."

"What? Is Jan here?" Michael questions, perhaps a little too loudly or abruptly for Pam, as he looks wildly across the lawn for a sign.

"No, no, Michael," Pam hushes him and rises from the stair she has been perched upon for the last twenty minutes, a sigh of discomfort already passing through her lips. "Just—"

The door opens at the front of the home, revealing to both of them a disheveled, bath robed, and not at all camera-ready Mrs. Wallace. The woman startles at the sight of the boom mic, Pam, and Michael, the latter of who unceremoniously presents her with a Tupperware container of something yellow and mushy.

Pam can only fold her lips tight until they feel like they may bleed, and she bows her head from sight as Mrs. Wallace uneasily invites them into her home.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Oh my gosh, Michael Scott is such a difficult character to write for. It's hard to think of anything obscene or awkward enough for him to say. The same thing goes for Dwight. So, hopefully, I captured those two fair enough.

And the stuff about 'the early worm catches the worm' I took from the actual episode, because I loved it very much. 3

Anyway, it's obvious that this chapter is merely the setup for the next, but I should have the second part out by the end of the week.


	8. Chapter 8

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 8_

There are very many people. More than he imagined, and more than he actually knows. Jim tried several times to count how many guests there were, but by the time eight o'clock rolled around, he lost the number.

It didn't really matter, though. Despite the crowd, his efforts to entertain himself, and Karen's fervent joking at his side, he couldn't stop his gaze from wandering toward the one guest that had primarily kept him occupied throughout most of the evening.

He replays their entrance again, how his hand had barely met David Wallace's own before his eyes were going on autopilot and he was scanning the perimeter for those familiar gold-red curls.

Car games and teasing were suddenly the farthest things from his mind when he finally did catch that first glimpse. His mouth went dry and he thought of the Sahara or Mojave and dear _god_, he still needs a drink.

Pam's wearing this blue number with straps and a cut down the center that does amazing things _for_ her and _to_ him. He doesn't think she's seen him watching her yet; he's been playing it careful, since Karen's practically super glued herself to his arm for the night. But their eyes had caught a few times, and in a particularly powerful moment, Pam glowed when she smiled under the chandelier and it took all of his conscious power to prevent any outright gaping at her loveliness.

Grins and chuckles were actively forced when Karen would joke about dating other guys at the party, or when Marty from the Albany branch made some wisecrack about C.K.'s latest sales pitch.

He couldn't focus. She was there, and he was there, and _fuck it all_, she was beautiful.

--

Pam prays he hasn't seen her staring. But it's got to be obvious to everyone who has bothered to look, and that's probably why Karen's been attached to Jim's shadow almost the whole night. She wishes they'd break apart – not "up", no, that's not what she—- but anyway, she really just wants to get a moment to go over and say 'hi' and not have to worry about confusion or dirty looks or suspicion.

But Pam settles and she waits by the buffet table, making awkward conversation with people she barely even knows, ever vigilant for her chance to steal that spare instance with Jim. However, each little interview she suffers through brings her down notch after notch. Almost all of them ask the same questions – _which department are you in, oh I'm at the Scranton branch, are you a salesman, no I'm the receptionist_ … and then they grab an h'ors d'oeuvre and bow out because she's not that important after all.

She doesn't blame them, honestly. Pam doesn't think she's that fascinating, either. But seeing Karen and Jim avidly interacting with everyone else – hell, even Michael is off in another room with Jan and some other guys – just makes her feel that much more out-of-place here and she's seriously considering just making an escape already.

"Pam, right?"

She startles and twists, finding David Wallace there beside her with his hand extended and the politest smile on his face. She returns it in kind and accepts his handshake, trying to be feminine-yet-firm in her squeeze. "Hi, yeah! Uhm, Beesly, Pam Beesly," she offers her full name for some inane reason, rolling her eyes at herself as she does.

He grins and withdraws his hand from hers, stuffs both in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. She immediately likes him. "Thanks for coming out with Michael. Nice to see some new faces at these functions."

"Oh, well," she laughs a bit deprecatingly, her head bowing to mask her blush. "Thanks for having me. I kind of feel like a party crasher," she gestures out toward the milling crowd and earns a chuckle from Wallace. "I mean, I'm sure you don't get many receptionists, besides Grace, right?"

"Uh, no," David concedes with a mutual nod. "But, I promise we're not snobs here. Everyone's attendance is appreciated, including the receptionists'."

"No, I definitely can see that!" She inclines her head to the table nearby and flashes him a quick grin which he reflects for her. "I'm impressed, really. I mean, those little crab cakes? Talk about pulling out the stops." They both chuckle off her teasing, and Pam gets a momentary high from making her boss' boss' boss laugh with easy ribbing.

"So. How's Michael doing over there in Scranton?" David poses the question and Pam knows that this is going to be the nicest question-and-answer regarding Michael she's ever been put through. "I mean, is he a good boss, or…?"

"Oh, Michael's…" Pam hesitates and grits her teeth behind folded lips, cautiously going over her options. "He's … I mean, he's a nice guy and, uhm … he's just a nice guy, y'know?"

David's got a kind smile when he nods his understanding. Pam's grateful for that. "So, he's comfortable with where he's at, huh?"

"He's … okay," Pam allows herself that stiff response.

He gives another quiet laugh, and she's proud that he thinks she's funny. She wonders if Jim would be proud, and that's when David tips his chin in the direction where she knows Jim is standing. She doesn't even have to look, but she follows his gesture anyway, finding Jim engrossed in some funny conversation with Karen. It makes her chest hurt. "And how about Jim? You guys known each other for a while?"

"Uh, about five years?" Pam throws out there, not at all wanting to have actively kept an accurate count, and she shrugs her shoulders as indifferently as possible. She's content on just watching Jim grin and shake his head at Karen anyway, as masochistic as it certainly feels. "I was there about a year before he got hired on." The smile Karen beams up at Jim is too much to take in that second, so Pam turns and looks at Wallace with what she hopes is a neutral smile.

"You guys get along?" David queries and Pam hates finding nuance where she rationally knows there's none. "Jim's a good guy?"

"Oh, yeah, totally," Pam bobs her head earnestly and her hands clasp together down by her hip in a moment of anxiety. She wants to hold it together, but the urge to gush is almost overwhelming. Even thinking of him has her smiling inching wider. "Jim's … great, you know? He's funny, a hard worker … y'know, everyone loves him, yeah, he's great," she keeps on nodding, like the motion means something, and Pam averts her eyes toward Jim again.

"Would you think of him as being successful in a higher position?"

David's question sinks in her stomach like a bowling ball, and she feels pale when she looks back at him. He implies so much in that simple question, and Pam isn't sure what a panic attack feels like. "Like, corporate?" David nods and Pam swallows and shrugs again. Her muscles feel tight. "I … I mean, I think so," she admits with a slow nod. "Jim is … well, he's really smart. And he's really capable, you know? I mean, you could give him something really awful or boring," Pam looks down at her new shoes and notices a scuff, and she doesn't know why that makes her throat clench, "and, uhm … and he'd just make it into something worthwhile."

She lifts her head, glances over toward Jim, and they have that second where he just naturally looks up at her and smiles, and she smiles back. He gives her a wave of recognition and it comforts her, makes her voice grow a bit when she speaks again. "When Jim really puts his mind to something or really wants something enough, and when he's on his game, he can really make, like, anything work. He's just … he's got a natural talent for that, I guess."

When she turns back to David, he's watching her with much keener interest, and Pam wonders if this is what he found her for. That she's just a reference point. Wallace nods slowly at her conclusion and she sees him gaze over at Jim, quirk a half-smile, and then settle his attention back upon her.

Her cheeks burn when she thinks she's said too much, that maybe he wants even more than that, but David extends his hand and glances down – this interview is done, apparently. Pam manages up a tip of her mouth and returns his handshake as he says, "Well, that's very insightful, Pam, thank you. You know, we're, uh … we've got our eye on Jim, I'm not gonna lie. We're looking at him to be one of our star players here in the near future, so hearing that from one of his coworkers is just really great news."

"That's … great," Pam fumbles and kind of gestures upward cluelessly with her hand when Wallace releases her. "Yeah, he's— Jim's— he's really good, definitely. For whatever."

"Well, I'll keep all that in mind. You, uh, keep having a good night, alright?" Wallace points at her and Pam smiles delicately. "See you around, Pam."

"Thanks," she offers quietly enough that she knows he can't hear, as David turns and meanders through the crowd again.

Her chest seizes up abruptly, like a bubble got stuck somewhere in the middle. Pam doesn't want to look at anyone, because irrationally she frets that maybe everyone in the room heard her when she climbed up on her soap box, took up some invisible megaphone, and read aloud her speech entitled 'Jim.'

She needs to find Michael now, because she really wants to go home.

--

David Wallace invited him to play basketball outside. No, no – David Wallace invited him to "shoot some hoops" out in his back-friggin'-yard.

Now, Jim's not one to brag, but … holy crap, he cannot stop grinning. Also, for the record? Wallace is actually pretty damn good on the court.

They talk small talk, a few cracks about rival teams, but mainly they keep it relative to business. How's the people from Stamford, what's up with Michael and Jan. Jim alludes that there's too much in that question for him to succinctly describe their situation, and that gets a good laugh out of David. He feels ten feet tall when David compliments him on a particular shot, and high-fiving one of the highest ups in a company he tells himself daily he really doesn't care about is … way better than he imagined.

"So, I had a good talk with, uh … Pam Beesly? Your receptionist?" David poses and shoots, scores. "I really like her."

Jim's throat gets a little clogged and he strives to clear it and find something believable in his arsenal of Neutral Responses Regarding Pam. He settles on the tried and true: "Uh, yeah. Pam's a nice girl."

"Yeah, she seems really sweet," David nods along and passes the ball over to Jim. "She was pretty complimentary about you, too."

His intense scrutiny of all the tiny dots on the basketball face screeches to a halt when curiosity and the thirst for anything she might have said about him springs into fruition. "Oh, uh … yeah? Well, we get along, so," he goes for nonchalant and tries to sink this shot, but the ball barely misses and skims along the rim. David goes under the hoop and catches it, while Jim tries to slow his heart rate.

"She said as much. Said you were really good at what you do, that you're really talented," David rattles off-handedly and shoots. It swooshes through the net. "Really good stuff to hear. Makes me think this company's making some right choices."

Jim wants to dive in head first and beg Wallace for a transcript; he saw them talking, and he realizes now what was going on. Was that why she smiled? Is that why she was blushing? There's a million things in his head that she could've said, would she have said, and he hasn't been this hungry for her words – for any crumb or vowel or any drop of his name from her – for almost a year.

His pulse races as he offers a handshake out to Wallace, calling it 'game.'

--

The text on her phone from Oscar invites her to Poor Richard's.

_How's the party? Inquiring minds want to know. Swing by PR later if you can._

She smiles and her thumbs set to work on a reply, but a shadow falls across her screen. Pam looks up and Jim's standing there with an awkward smile and he looks so much more handsome close-up than faraway. Pam's heart stutters.

"Hi," his voice is gruff, and it's a soothing sound, but she wonders why he smells like fresh grass and why his cheeks are so pink. "Bringing out the phone, Beesly? Really? At David Wallace's?" He clucks his tongue while she giggles. "Have you no shame?"

Pam smirks a little and clicks the case closed, slipping the device back into her clutch. "No one's talking to me," she admits with a tiny laugh and a shrug of her shoulder. "I'm just some boring receptionist."

"Oh, yeeaah," Jim drawls like the memory just struck him, and he grimaces at her. "Well, I have _got_ to be going…" He pretends like he's going to turn away, but her tinkling laugh has him about-facing with a cheeky smile.

"So, uhm, where's Karen?" Pam asks what feels like the most natural question, but it seems to make Jim stiffen up. She notices now that he's got his jacket on, and her heart descends a little further into her belly. "Are you guys leaving?"

"Uh, yeah," he reaches around to itch at where she assumes his shirt tag is. She wonders if it's sticking up, if she should tuck it back, but with a blush she disregards such ventures of the imagination. "Actually, that's why I'm—"

"Oh, right," Pam rises up and though she assumes there's a hug or a handshake to present, he drops his head to better look at her. She tilts her head curiously, obviously misunderstanding. "What's up?"

"Well, see ... Karen just mentioned it to me, and …. How … are you getting home?"

"Oh, well, I was just gonna get a ride with Mich—"

Jim bites his lip and squints off to the left, and Pam follows his gaze toward Michael and Jan. Michael seemingly can't keep his hands or eyes off her, and even from afar Pam can make out the hazy fog of intoxication surrounding Jan.

It clicks in her head and she feels sick almost at once. "Oh, _god_," she blanches, her hand slipping over her mouth in horror. She whips her head up to stare pleadingly at Jim, and he's already smiling down at her.

"_Thank you, _" she hisses and pulls her clutch close to her heart. "I really almost got in the car with them."

"Did your life just flash before you eyes?" Jim teases with an infectious grin that makes her tingle right down to her toes.

"Seriously," she laughs on a relieved exhale, her feet moving as she follows along behind him, watching as he cuts through the dwindling crowd of guests. "That car ride would've been even better than the first, I'm sure."

"Are you kidding, Pam? That would've easily been the best three hours ever spent," Jim swings an arm to beckon her along as he sets on a path for the front door, his hand reaching into his back pocket where she sees the outline of his keys. He looks back with a smirk and raises both eyebrows. "Now, are you sure you don't want to reconsider?"

They share a laugh as they crunch across the lawn and the gravel drive, with Jim's car parked close by. Karen's already in the passenger seat, and Pam can see her fiddling with where she knows the radio to be. The woman looks up through the window and at first, her expression is surprise, but it levels off into something not entirely recognizable to Pam. Nevertheless, both women attempt tentative smiles as Jim rounds the car for the driver's side and Pam is the last to climb in.

--

When they're pulling up to Karen's street, Jim's pretty sure this trip could've rivaled Pam's first, and he thinks in some ways maybe she was better off hitching a ride with Michael and a borderline-drunk Jan. But when he looks in the rearview, he finds her looking fairly content as she gazes out the window, and maybe it's not her that he should worry about, after all.

It's Karen that he's truly getting the aggression from as it ripples outward from her in waves. She hasn't been too chatty, only responding when necessary, and Jim hasn't exactly made completely eye contact with her. Honestly, he can't help but wonder if she's just still mad about the stuff from before (she seemed okay at the party, but Karen's not a stranger to putting up a front, right?) or if it's because Pam's nestled in his backseat.

A notable feeling strikes him lethally in the pit of his stomach and further below as he reconsiders his phrasing, keeps his eyes on the road, and promises to never again think of 'backseat' and 'Pam' in the same sentence.

He stops next to Karen's duplex and finally brings himself to look over at her, his eyes having avoided her throughout most of that three hour duration. Karen grudgingly returns his gaze, pops a cheap smile, and doesn't even spare a glance back to Pam as she departs with an overly cheery farewell. Jim sighs heavily and looks down at the gearshift, contemplating the paths etched in his mind and to what ends they might lead. He eventually hefts a deep breath and he ruefully peers around his headrest to spy Pam observing him in silence. "I'll, uh ... be right back."

Pam nods and he can't make out if that's a smile or a frown on her face. He feels kind of queasy at the idea of dissecting it.

He's out of the car and dodging up Karen's drive anyway, and he catches her by the elbow to turn her around. She's wearing this mean look that he doesn't think he's seen on her, caught somewhere between hurt and infuriated, and Jim worries suddenly and very much so about his choices tonight.

"Is ... something wrong?" It feels like a cop out, and he feels like a jerk.

"No," Karen spits out bitterly and scrounges up her set of keys, ticking off the metal pieces until she finds the one to the front knob. "Oh, no, Jim, it's all just great. Really great."

Jim heaves and shuts his eyes, and he runs his flat palm across his face. Already, his chin and cheeks are feeling stubbly and rough. "We will talk tomorrow, okay? I swear--"

"Yeah, sure," Karen brightens in a way that insults him and he glares at her. "Or, you know, whenever's convenient for _you_." She waves toward the car and grins acid up at him. "Why don't you tell Pam I say goodnight?"

"Karen…"

She doesn't dignify him with a response, and he's unsure which floods stronger at this reaction: relief or shame. Karen stands there for a second longer, hesitating on his behalf, to give him a chance he knows she wants him to take … but he only blinks at her helplessly, his mouth just sitting open.

When she disappears into her duplex, Jim lingers on her porch, waiting for the light to click on above him. It doesn't. He turns to look over at his car parked by the mailbox, and even though it's very dark, he can see Pam and all her luminescence tucked within the backseat. He's not sure what it means, or how he feels about it - he just looks, and there she is.

He takes his time getting back into the car, and Pam doesn't move to take the passenger seat. Jim sits there after he's closed the door, the key still hanging in the ignition and the dark pressed all around them, and he's just listening as both of them breathe within the same tiny metal box.

Finally, Jim clears his throat and looks back around to find her eyes wide in the dark. He struggles to find an appropriate follow up. "So, home, then?"

Pam could jump at the sound of his voice, he wouldn't blame her; it's louder than he intended. But he sees her shake her head instead, and he's confused and a little anxious by the motion. "Uhm, actually, Oscar and some of the guys are down at Poor Richard's?" Her tone is lower, softer. "I was thinking a drink sounds good right now."

He considers her and the hedging of her smile, and Jim is pretty sure he knows an invitation from Pam when he hears one. His palm pats the steering wheel and he twists the key, revving the car to life, and it feels far less heavy around him now. "I think … a drink sounds amazing. Mind if I tag along?"

His eyes reach the mirror and his gaze hits hers. It takes a few muddy seconds, but when he sees the slow crinkle of her eyes, it's all he needs to go on. "_Only_ if you promise you won't cramp my style," she warns with a lifted index finger.

They both smile, and Jim sets the car into motion in a new direction.

* * *

**Author's Note: **_Cocktails_, part deux! Part 3 will be up sometime next week, since Spring Break is coming to a close for me. :( We'll see what I can do. I'm still trying to feel out a good way to close this fic up, but it won't be for another handful of chapters, I think.


	9. Chapter 9

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 9_

He'd be a liar if he were to say he's completely confident in his choices tonight. While the swing of his key ring around his finger reads as blasé, Jim's insides are grinding themselves into bits as he and Pam cross the lot outside Poor Richard's. Nausea overwhelms him entirely as she slips past him with a thankful grin at his chivalry and he feels the flutter of her skirt by his knuckles. He blinks hard to focus his attention into himself.

For all intents and purposes, Jim is a gigantic tool. He knows that, acknowledges it, and you can look at that from any different angle that you want, but he mostly considers himself within the 'undeniable jackass' definition – and yes, it really is shameful. He painfully thinks of Karen's stern face in tandem with Pam's glad and pretty smiles, which altogether creates a wholly displeasing cocktail of anxiety and despondence inside his middle.

But he follows Pam toward the pool table corner regardless once they've entered, his eyes trained on the straps that secure her entirely feminine heels to her feet. He marvels quietly at her grace in such violent little death traps, thinking of how sharply they contrast to her usual Keds and flats, and though he hates to think it anymore (he had been over it for months, right?) he feels desperate to just keep looking at her.

"Oh, do you want something?" Pam wonders and pauses just outside the collection of their coworkers, all of whom have not quite spotted them yet. Jim tests the look in her eyes, gauging her as conversational and not nuanced, and he tilts a smile down at her and nods. She beams in return, and he swallows around it as she holds up a finger and rounds him, her heels clicking her spiritedly toward the bar not far behind them.

Jim shuts his eyes, inhales through wide nostrils, then exhales slowly. _Hold it together_. With a jaunty wave, he greets his fellow Dunder Mifflinites, already thinking of excuses as to why Karen isn't there, none of them sounding at all convincing in his head.

--

Pam's fingers are sweaty when she passes the bartender a couple of bills in exchange for two beer bottles. She watches the bartender root around for her order and a couple of others, and she ponders on her luck – if you could call it that - this evening. Somehow she's managed to go from Michael's escort to bar buddies with Jim, all under the same 24 hours, and it's just starting getting to her. She hopes it doesn't show.

She glances over her shoulder to find Jim handshaking around the group of coworkers, and it's not until the bartender presents her with two labels that she comes back to herself.

With a smile, she takes them from him, but when she looks down at the dark brews in her hand, Pam stops. "Oh."

It's something insignificant, really. She knows it's not a big deal; bartenders are busy, they can't get everything right. But there's this new part of her – the part that openly watches Jim when Karen's around these days, the part that told Roy no at Phyllis' wedding, the part that wants to let the world and certain people know who she is and what she wants out of life – that makes her move. Pam faces the bartender again and sets the beers on the counter, her face determined and her fingers shaking. "Uhm, one of these is supposed to be a light," Pam tells him as certainly as she can. She's happy enough that it doesn't sound like a question.

The bartender simply takes one of the beers, switches it out for a light, and the lighter label is set in front of Pam with no excuse or argument.

Delight is not a strong enough word for the sensation that overcomes her.

--

The beer hasn't left his grasp since she handed it to him. Jim's watched her play a round of pool, has listened to her regale everyone with her heroic tale of surviving a trip to New York with Michael. Both of them share details about the party, exchange looks like 'you had to be there', and really, it feels good. It feels like two years ago. He's even almost let himself forget about Karen and her angry brow, the argument they were in the middle of having.

Pam's laughing at some joke he just told and for the life of him, he can't remember what it was. But it doesn't matter; the way she looks is all he wants. She is drowning in her glee, her eyes crinkling when she grins wide enough to show every shiny tooth in her mouth, and Jim is positively enchanted by her.

Oscar's hand is in his face, and Jim takes the gesture and hitches a smile up at him. "Later, man. See you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Don't stay out too late you guys. You know that Dwight keeps careful time," Oscar warns in that way that teasing coworkers do, a significant look shifted between Jim and Pam that apparently both are willing to ignore.

And then there were two, since Jim doesn't really count Angela, Ryan or Kelly. He peeks beside himself to find Pam's fingers itching at the label on her bottle, her eyebrows knit tight in the middle. She's preoccupied with something, with her lower lip sucked in on the side as she obviously ponders the world.

He smiles despite his concern, as his first instinct is always to stop her overworked brain. "Thanks again," Jim begins loud enough to return her to the present, her eyes so wide when she turns her face up at him. "For inviting me out, I mean," he lifts his brew for reference, and she smiles faintly at him.

"Oh, yeah," she breezes and waves her hand at him. "Thanks for giving me a ride back into town. I don't know if I could've survived another trip with Michael and Jan."

"Totally would've been a goner," Jim nods affirmative and sips his drink as she laughs. "And we all know that the Charlie's Angels roll out of the car only works for Charlie's Angels."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures, Jim," Pam theatrically lifts her finger at chin level to him, her eyebrows pointedly arched. "Don't underestimate me."

He chuckles now and can't help but grin at her and her silly determination. "You're right. Life or death situations change things."

She mmmhmms around the mouth of her beer and takes a good chug. The way her throat works around the gulp has him tightening his hand involuntarily around the neck of his bottle, and he grits his teeth together and pretends like he was watching something over her head. "So—"

"Jim—"

They both stop and look intently at the other, anticipating the other's direction.

"Uh, you go," Jim laughs, feeling boyish as he gestures toward her.

"Oh, well," Pam fidgets and shrugs a shoulder, and he watches her eyes dart anxiously between their beer bottles. He feels it on the tip of his tongue, has the strongest sense of déjà vu when she looks up at him with doe eyes and parted lips. It stings in the back of his throat and burns at the corner of his eyes. But he can't bring himself to that precipice with her, even as he sees it unravel on her face before him. "I just … I wanted to say that, uhm…"

She can't quite make it that far. Pam swallows a full gulp of air and looks back to her beer for some kind of absolution, and he hates her for it. It gives Jim time to steel himself and he crooks a strong smile at her and pats the tabletop with his palm. It effectively draws her attention. "Well, I was gonna say, I'm about to head out," he pulls his thumb over his shoulder and tries to be oblivious to her sagging shoulders. "Did you still need a lift, or--?"

"Angela," Pam blurts and Jim folds his lips into a thin line. She continues nodding, like she's trying to convince herself. "Yeah, uhm, she's already offered, since she lives on that side of—"

"Oh, yeah, no," he waves off her excuses, always excuses, and he has that anger thickening in him again. It's a special brand of irritation left only for her, and he's got to be feeling like a temperamental nine year old when he pushes up from the booth a little too roughly. Her eyes follow, but he can't quite meet them, as he downs the last part of his bottle in a deep swig that only college kids are accustomed. He smacks his lips and knows he must look a little red when he nods down at her. "Anyway, thanks again," Jim tips his now-empty bottle at her and sets it on the table in front of her. "See you tomorrow?"

Her mouth opens, but Jim doesn't have the patience to wait for her response.

--

Pam has that burning itch rising up into her nostrils when he departs so hastily, and her courage has melted away. Her fingers hang at the edge of the table and the whole bar's getting bleary when she glances to the side.

There it is, black and leather and looking like something Karen would've bought him. She snatches up the wallet and leaves her purse and jacket unattended.

--

When Jim pats at his back pocket, he already knows what's going to happen next. His perfect exit will be ruined, he'll have to walk back in there, see her face, and he'll have to touch her fingers when she hands him his wallet. Her fingertips will probably tremble and he'll despise himself all over again.

"Fuck," he hisses and is sorely tempted to kick the door.

He hears her heels clacking on the cement before she calls his name. Jim turns and sees her hurrying toward him as swiftly as her footwear will permit, and it would almost be funny if she didn't look so god damn gorgeous. He's angry at her all over again when she reaches him, all winded and pink in the cheeks.

"Here, you forgot this," she breathes and proffers his wallet.

"Yeah, I just noticed," he reaches for it. "Thanks—"

Pam tugs it out of his reach. His eyes shoot up and he notices that ghosting at the corners of her mouth, where secret dimples lie. "I have something to say first," her breathing steadies as she tilts her head at him, his wallet drawn in closer to her chest._ Fuck her_, he thinks, and it feels sacreligious. "Okay?"

Jim studies her, fascinated suddenly by her daring. "Okay," his mouth agrees before his brain does.

"Okay," Pam echoes and bows her head with a shaky exhale. When she looks back up, there's something there he doesn't quite recognize, and it puts him off a bit. He knows everything about this girl, every nuance and look and glance and twist of her features, and when he can't place this one expression, his heart race shoots up.

"Why did you go to Stamford?"

Jim balks at her query, his hand tremors at his side and his heart forms a lump in his throat. "What?"

"You didn't even—" Pam begins, then huffs out through her nose. "You just _left_."

"Yeah," he hesitates and a glare levels his eyebrows together. "Yeah, I did. And you know why, Pam." Jim sees her fade a little, and tiredness aches in his bones for both of them. "Look, don't do this—"

"I called off my wedding because of you," she rushes out, and it weighs heavily in his gut. But Pam seems almost frantic now as she gestures out to him with the hand clutching his wallet, "And now we're not even friends." He watches her face hint at breaking, sees the flush rising in her cheeks and chest, and her eyes plead sharply with him. It makes him think of parking lots and heartbreak, that emptiness that corresponds with not having her, and the bubbling feeling under his chest that happens just when he sees her. He loves her, still, he does, and when she looks at him like that, how can he possibly not?

"Jim, I just—"

The words are muffled between them as he reaches for the side of her neck, draws her forward, and crushes his mouth to hers. She gasps into him, leans toward his chest, and he trembles when her hand clutches at the front of his sweater.

* * *

**Author's Note: **OKAY so that took forever to get out. My bad! School is picking up as I near the end of the semester, not to mention I kind of fell in love with the show Heroes and have been watching the first two seasons nonstop. ;) Anyway, I hope to wrap this up soon. A few more chapters to go!


	10. Chapter 10

**Here's a Hypothetical**

_Chapter 10_

They haven't made eye-contact all day, but the back of Jim's neck is sweating like he just stepped off the court. He reaches around, itches at the curling baby hairs there, and grimaces at the dampness left on his palm.

He knows she's staring at him under the cover of her computer monitor, has been for the last - oh – three hours and forty minutes. But he's just still not sure where to look.

"Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam." He keeps his eyes glued to his day planner and tries not to let the sound of her quiet voice nip at his ears, already feels the prickling at the tips. "Hold please."

The green light flickers to life next to line 101. Jim hesitates, then lifts the receiver.

"Jim Halpert," he greets and coughs around the lingering mass that's been stuck in his throat since last night. It's Robert Marrow, and he's looking to renew his contract – that is, if he can get a better deal with Dunder Mifflin than with Staples.

Jim reaches across and snatches up Dwight's sale book while his desk mate is away, thumbs through the pages to find the latest offer in the catalogue. "Alright, well, let's see what we can do for you, Bob."

Bob says he'll call back later this afternoon; he needs more time to go through the records. Jim realizes as he clicks the phone back into place that he's probably lost the sale. Dwight comes back in time to spy Jim pitching the catalogue back across the table. He'd love to play along with Dwight, as the other salesman rants about personal property and filling out behavioral reports, but his heart is just not in it today.

When he looks over to Karen's desk, he catches her tentative eye, and he can't even hitch a smile for her.

**_xxx_**

_He pulls away with a shaky puff of air and even though it's foggy in her brain and her eyes feel heavy and glassy, it's all just like Pam remembers it. _

_His upper lip was kind of salty then, too. _

**xxx**

"Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam," it itches at her throat as she says it for the umpteenth time today. More phone calls than usually; that's how she feels, anyway.

She glances at the clock as the gruff voice on the other end scratches out her name. Her eyebrows knit together and she tucks the receiver closer to her mouth. "Roy?"

He sounds gravelly and a little bit slurred around the edges. She should know this lull of his voice by now, what with all the groveling and pleading and drunken fights in the early summer. _"Hey, Pammy, listen—"_

"Why are you calling me here?"

"_Listen, hey, wait—uhm, Pam, hey, I need to- come down here," _he stumbles out and she rolls her eyes.

"To the warehouse? What do you want?" Pam thinks there are invisible eyeballs on the back of Jim's head looking at her; it's egocentrism at its finest. He hasn't looked at her all day, but she can swear she sees his shoulders hitch minutely and the tips of his ears tinge pink around the curve.

"_The lot, just—come down, would you? I'm by your car."_

"Fine," she huffs, and despite herself she feels color rising in her cheeks. It's frustrating, stepping into the same grounds she treaded for years. How easily it fits, and it makes her kind of mad at him all over again. "I'll be down in a sec."

He hangs up on her. Kind of odd, and it makes her belly tumble curiously.

**xxx**

"_Why are you doing this?" _

_Her voice is soft and whispers against the collar of his shirt. He longs to pull her near, though she's tucked solidly against him now. It isn't enough; he needs her so much closer than that. It burns so terribly in the back of his throat. "That's a good question."_

_Tiny fingers dance at the crisp folds around his neck, and her nails glint like glass under the lamp light. He swallows. "Pam—"_

"_I meant what I said," she offers, breathy and hasty. "You just—you need to know that." _

"_I do," he hurts as he says it. "And you need to know why this isn't working." _

_She sniffles quietly up in her nose and his ribs begin cracking. He can't deal with this. He never wanted to be back here. _

**xxx**

They're crowding into the conference room for some pep talk by Michael, and all Jim can think of as he sits down next to Karen is the million different places Pam might've snuck off to. Michael queries as to her whereabouts and raises his eyebrows specifically at Jim.

He feels Karen's careful eye upon his brow and he simply shakes his head.

As Michael sets into his rambling, Jim lets his attention wander across the windowsill. He sees her pink coat flapping in the breeze, then her red-golden curls. He squints to make out what she's heading for, and there he seems him by her car.

Jim grits his teeth together and grinds down, a new throbbing beating behind his forehead as he wonders what the point of anything is, anymore.

Karen's palm glides against his knee and he turns his gaze back out the window.

Pam looks like she's frowning, but he can't tell from all the way up here.

**xxx**

_Her hands keep gripping at him, she can't seem to control it. Every part of her wants to be a part of _this_. "I'm sorry, if—"_

"_Don't be, please," she shakes her head at him, feeling very weary. "It's stupid." _

_They both hurt a little at the brashness of a such a word. Pam clears her throat and tips her head up at him, kisses his chin. It's gentle and her lips are warm, soft, and he's still not quite sure how to perceive it. He moves his mouth down to meet hers again, nevertheless._

**xxx**

Spring's chill settles into her bones as she tightens her coat around her and approaches her car, finds Roy leaning against it. He's looking at her with something akin to a pout and a five o'clock shadow paired with bloodshot eyes are affirmation that this is a version of Roy she wants no part of.

She hesitates several paces from him, and she purses her lips.

"I got a question for you," he's meaner sounding outdoors than he was over the phone. Pam feels that cautious rumble under her bosom again. "And I need you to be real honest with me, Pam."

"Roy, I don't have time for this," she chastises him and glares at his snicker. Her arms tighten around her midsection in an attempt to soothe herself.

He nods and nods and throws a sloppy glance her way. "Yeah, yeah, you must be so busy up there, answering phones and—" Roy stops and lifts himself from her car unsteadily, his brows knotting together immediately. "You know, you wouldn't even have this stupid job if I hadn't helped you."

Pam heaves in a calming, chilled breath and levels a certain look at him. It's worked in the past; even brows, the thin line of her mouth, half-hooded eyes that remind him he is not taking higher ground in this situation. He does retreat back against her car, and she feels better about it. "Is that what you wanted to say to me?"

Roy shuffles his foot against the ground, and she sees him sag a little in his chest and shoulders. Bursts of antagonism aside, she does feel overwhelming sympathy and pangs of despair at such a broken sight - for which she is at least partially responsible.

"I just, I need to know, Pam," he gruffs down at his shirt collar and shakes his head. "I can't get it out of my head, and I just—"

"What are you—"

"Did you cheat on me?"

It's hopeless sound, the way he phrases the question. Open and wounded, and his big eyes that threaten heartbreak strike her down. But Pam can't help but gape at him, half in revulsion and half in surprise

"Are you serious?"

"That's all you can come up with," he sounds bitter as he glances away from her, lip curling.

"Roy," she starts again, firmer this time, as her cheeks begin to light anew. "I never cheated on you. Ever. How could you even—"

"So, you just decided that after ten years—"

Her hands are up and she's backing away, the unreason from months prior creeping into this conversation, and she will have none of it. "I'm done with this, Roy. You're drunk, you need to go home."

"Don't walk away from me, Pam!" He shouts across the scant feet she's put between them, and she turns at his demand. "Damn it, I saw you last night!"

Heart and bones freeze up, and Pam loses her breath for all of three seconds. "Excuse me?"

"With Halpert, I saw you," Roy doesn't seem to know whether he should feel like he's won or rip off someone's face. "So, you tell me why you looked so fucking comfortable kissing him."

It is most assuredly horror that keeps her jaw hanging open this time. "You were spying on me?" He doesn't answer, and it's all she needs. "Really nice, Roy."

Her mouth sets and she almost snarls as she pivots and stomps one long stride at a time for the building entrance. As he hollers at her retreating form, her name echoes about the parking lot, but her ears are burning much too furiously for her to make out the syllable.

**xxx**

"_You should get home," he tells her silently as his hands slide around the front of her waist. _

_She nods and she hasn't spoken a word since they parted. "It's late," she concurs in the way that is so strikingly familiar between them. "You're right." _

_And yet. They hesitate and hold and Jim feels anchored by her gentle hands on his front. _

"_I wish you'd come back." She says it in a quiet and assured tone as her palm begins to smooth out his sweater. Her eyes flicker up and he can't help but think, as he has a thousand and one times before, that this could've been so easy if only she had let it. _

**xxx**

Her hand is on the receiver before her body rounds the reception desk. Roy's thundering footfalls still sound like they're right behind her, but certainly, he wouldn't. Nevertheless, her fingers tap swiftly at the three-digit extension she's only ever used twice.

"Hey, uhm, Hank?" She tries to keep her voice calm and low – glances over to find the conference room full with Michael's captivated audience – and allows herself a shudder. "Yeah, listen, Roy Anderson from the warehouse is—"

His figure flashes in the glass outside the doors and Pam's throat clogs with a new kind of panic. "Uhm, here, and I really think you should come up!" Her breath rushes it all out of her and she slams the receiver down as he steps through the portal. He's pink and out of breath and Pam tremors as the rumblings from the conference room begins to spill into the sales floor.

"Hey, Halpert!" Roy's voice tears through her senses and her heart race leaps.

Jim hits her peripheral and she quickly looks over, her mouth flopping helplessly at his uncertain glance in return.

It happens much too fast. Roy moves past her and Jim's eyes go big. Pam thinks she might have screamed, or maybe it's Karen or Angela, or even maybe Michael. Her hip hits a desk when she grazes Roy's bicep with her hand, then someone's shouting from the doorway, and everything goes still. Oscar's pulling her away from the edge as Kevin helps Jim up from the floor by Ryan's desk.

Pam is transfixed by the delicate reddening around Jim's left eye when he glances up at her and winces. All at once, she begins to ache almost burdensomely, the throbbing radiating from all parts of her. She glances over and sees Hank snapping shiny cuffs around Roy's wrist, and in the corner she thinks she hears Angela mutter something unpleasant as Kelly and Ryan murmur back and forth.

It should all feel so silly. But it doesn't.

* * *

**Author's Note: **For whatever reason, this chapter is processing very wonkily in and it's got me all peeved. Anyway, HERE IT IS! This is my story's version of _The Negotiation_. ;)


End file.
